Topeka ? Two groups of Kansas school administrators told a legislative panel Wednesday that many districts are still having trouble recruiting qualified teachers, especially in rural areas, and they suggested changes to a program that would give them more flexibility in hiring retired teachers for certain hard-to-fill positions.

“In light of the difficulty we had this past year in hiring, I think it could be very important down the road,” said Glen Suppes, superintendent of the Smoky Valley school district in Lindsborg. “I think it’s kind of sad that we have to have those provisions in place.”

During the 2015 session, lawmakers made changes to a program called Working After Retirement, which gives limited authority for employers within the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System to hire retired workers who are already drawing a pension if they cannot find a younger worker to fill certain jobs.

Before the new law, state agencies and local governments could hire retired workers, but those workers were limited to earning up to $20,000 a year before they either had to quit the job or forego their KPERS benefits for the rest of the year. Employers that use the program, however, must also make higher payments into the KPERS system.

Under the bill enacted this year, the earnings cap is raised to $25,000 starting July 1, 2016. Furthermore, re-employed teachers in the five most hard-to-fill subject areas are allowed to work for up to three years, and school districts can apply for a one-year extension beyond that if they can document that they have advertised the position widely but have not been able to hire qualified candidates.

During a meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Pensions, Investments and Benefits, two education groups, United School Administrators of Kansas and the Kansas School Superintendents Association, pushed for changes to the new law.

First, they urged raising the income cap beyond $25,000. They also suggested establishing a standard procedure to apply for the one-year “hardship” extension rather than filing their requests directly with the committee.

Sen. Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, noted that the bill passed in 2015 included a requirement that lawmakers review the $25,000 earnings cap in 2016.

And the committee agreed to a motion by Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence, that the panel include in its final report to the 2016 Legislature a “strong recommendation” to consider the suggested changes to the hardship extension.

Meanwhile, Rep. Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, said the Legislature should consider raising the additional money that employers pay into KPERS on behalf of re-employed retired workers, possibly up to 30 percent of the employee’s salary, instead of the current 8 percent.

The groups also suggested there be at least a 60-day waiting period between the time an employee retires and the time he or she goes back to work in order to avoid violating IRS regulations on working after retirement.

Those regulations generally prohibit “pre-arranged” deals in which a person retires from an employer and starts drawing retirement, knowing at the time that he or she has already accepted another position after retirement.

Although rural districts have reported the most difficulty in recruiting new teachers in recent years, some urban districts have had difficulty as well.

But in rural areas, Suppes conceded, the Working After Retirement program may only be a stopgap measure, and in the long term, those districts may need to rely more on virtual classes and other forms of distance learning in order to provide certain kinds of instruction.

“We’ve tried to hold off from doing that, but that certainly may be an issue very quickly,” he said. “I think we’re going to see more and more of that.”