The Kansas Statehouse in Topeka

Topeka ? Kansas legislative leaders approved a list of topics for committees to study between now and the start of the 2017 session, but coming up with a new school funding formula was not among them.

But House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, would not rule out the possibility that school finance could be added at a later time.

“This isn’t our last meeting,” Merrick said at the end of a meeting of the Legislative Coordinating Council, a group made up of the top Republican and Democratic leaders from both chambers.

In 2014, lawmakers abolished the school funding formula that had been in place for more than 20 years and replaced it for two years with a system of block grants, which essentially froze overall funding in place.

They have said they plan to pass a new funding formula during the 2017 session that would take effect during the 2017-2018 school year.

Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court has been reviewing a constitutional lawsuit that challenges the way school funding is being distributed under that block grant system.

Earlier this year, the court ruled that money wasn’t being distributed fairly among the state’s 286 school districts, forcing lawmakers into a special session in June to come up with a new equalization formula, which the court has since accepted.

In September, though, the court will hear oral arguments in the much larger “adequacy” portion of the case to determine whether the overall amount of state funding for public schools, which is more than $4 billion a year, is sufficient to provide all students with a proper education.

Senate Democratic Leader Anthony Hensley, of Topeka, said after Monday’s meeting that he believes GOP leaders will wait until after the November elections before approving an interim committee to study school finance.

The Legislative Coordinating Council is responsible for approving interim committee meetings, as well as the number of days they can meet and the scope of the topics they are to consider. Some are routine in nature, but others are the direct result of issues and questions that arose during the previous session.

Among the study topics approved Monday were a review of the adequacy of the state foster care system, and reviews of the Larned and Osawatomie State Hospitals, including the Sexual Predator Treatment Program at Larned.

In addition, the panel approved a three-year, $271,070 contract to move the Legislature’s public website, www.kslegislature.org, and backup data center to a third-party web hosting company, Lightedge Solutions.

Currently, the website is hosted in-house by the Kansas Office of Information Technology Services, which has had difficulty providing enough bandwidth to keep the website functional during high-traffic periods, especially during legislative sessions.