Topeka ? The Kansas Senate is expected to vote Monday afternoon to send a bill to Gov. Sam Brownback that would drastically overhaul how the state funds public schools, despite a threat from a district court panel to block any changes from taking effect.

The Senate is scheduled to convene at 3:30 p.m., and one of the first items of business will be a motion to concur with the House’s action on the bill.

Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, predicted the bill would pass. And she harshly criticized the three-judge panel in Topeka for its order Friday suggesting it could intervene, “to preserve the status quo.”

House Rules Committee Chairman John Barker, center, R-Abilene, said opponents of the school finance overhaul could not move to reconsider Friday's passage of the bill because the bill had already been sent to the Senate and read into the journal.

“We have never seen this kind of interference in the legislative process,” Wagle said. “Before the bill is passed, before it’s debated, as if we’re not even going to be vetted in that court. And there will be no testimony. It’s quite astounding what they’ve done.”

The bill narrowly passed the House on Friday, 64-57. But opponents of the bill had hoped to make a motion to reconsider that action on Monday. It takes 63 yes votes to pass legislation in the House, and Democrats had hoped that a few wavering Republicans might have changed their minds over the weekend.

But House GOP leaders had made that impossible by speedily walking the bill over to the Senate shortly after the vote Friday. The bill was then read into the Senate journal, officially taking it out of the House’s hands.

The bill would repeal the current per pupil-based funding formula that assigns weightings to different categories of students and replace it with a system of block grants supporters say will give districts more flexibility in how they spend those funds.

It also increases overall funding for education, although most of the new money would go toward increased contributions into the state’s troubled pension system. And many districts, including Lawrence, would end up with less money under the new formula than they get now.

Also on Friday, however, a three-judge panel presiding over an ongoing school finance lawsuit issued an order, putting all the parties on notice that it may, with or without notice, issue whatever temporary orders are necessary “to preserve the status quo” while that case is being litigated.

The court also directed that several other parties be added as defendants in the case, including Secretary of State Kris Kobach, State Treasurer Ron Estes, the Revisor of Statutes and the director of the Division of Accounts and Reports within the state budget office.