TOPEKA ? Top Republican legislators in Kansas are hearing plenty of criticism of their proposal to overhaul how the state distributes aid to public schools, and they’re likely to keep hearing it this week.

But committee hearings also will give lawmakers a chance to take testimony from supporters of the GOP plan. The House Appropriations Committee begins its review of the measure Monday, and the Senate Ways and Means Committee starts Tuesday.

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and many GOP lawmakers want to junk the state’s current per-pupil spending formula, arguing that it’s too hard to understand and doesn’t direct enough funds into classrooms. Republican legislators’ plan also prevents unanticipated and automatic spending increases that have occurred under the existing formula.

The state’s 286 school districts would lose $51 million of the aid they had expected to receive before the end of June, though they’d still be getting more money for the current school year than they did in 2013-14. Republican leaders project that their plan will increase state aid in each of the next two school years, but largely because of rising state contributions for teacher pensions.

Each committee has an identical bill containing the GOP plan, which scraps the formula and gives school districts “block grants” based on their current aid instead. The new system would remain in place only while lawmakers develop a new formula.

“This is highlighting the complexity of the formula and how it’s flawed,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ron Ryckman Jr., an Olathe Republican.

Other lawmakers and many educators argue that the formula is sound and the state isn’t providing enough aid to schools — though it would top $4 billion for the current school year and each of the next two school years under the GOP plan.

School funding is the largest item in the state budget. Lawmakers this year must close a projected shortfall of nearly $600 million in the budget for the fiscal year beginning in July that arose after they reduced income taxes in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback’s urging as an economic stimulus.

In reducing aid for the current school year, GOP legislators’ plan concentrates the cuts in dollars for equipment and building repairs and in aid for districts that want to levy additional property taxes but can’t match the revenue-raising of the wealthiest ones.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that it analyzed the plan and found that most of the state’s poorest school districts would lose operations and maintenance funds, while most of the wealthiest ones would be protected. Critics of the plan had predicted such a result.

“It’s very detrimental to poor school districts,” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, told The Associated Press.