Toby Crouse, a Kansas City attorney hired by the Legislature to advise it in answering a recent Supreme Court decision on school finance, asks questions of witnesses during a special deposition-like hearing before the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

Topeka ? The Kansas Senate sent its school finance bill back to committee Monday, with plans to bring forth a new bill that could be voted on later this week.

“We still plan on going home Thursday,” said Sen. Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, who made the motion to send the bill back to committee. “So we read (the new bill) in today, so I could see something appearing on the calendar Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.

The surprise move came after the Joint Legislative Budget Committee held an unprecedented type of hearing throughout the day Monday in which an attorney hired by the Legislature, with a court reporter present, took testimony similar to depositions regarding how the Legislature devised its current funding system, and what they believe the Supreme Court’s order in February really means.

Denning said details of the new bill still haven’t been worked out, but that it may be very different from the one the Senate was preparing to vote on Monday, including the possibility of a “hold harmless” provision to ensure that no district would lose equalization funding under a new formula.

The Supreme Court’s decision in February said that lawmakers created an unconstitutional funding system last year when they repealed old formulas that determined how school funding is distributed and devised a new formula for distributing equalization aid to less wealthy districts.

Equalization aid is used to subsidize the capital outlay and local option budgets of school districts — two funds that come primarily from local property taxes — so that districts with less property wealth do not have to levy significantly higher property tax rates than districts with more wealth.

The Lawrence school district was among those that lost state aid last year under the new system, which was partly responsible for the district raising its property tax mill levy for this year.

The bill that the Senate was to vote on Monday would have restored the old formula, which would have enabled Lawrence and other districts in similar situations to reduce their mill levies. But districts that had gained aid under the new formula would have lost it under the Senate bill, possibly resulting in higher tax levies in those districts.

The overall cost of the bill, estimated at about $38 million, would have been paid for by reducing every district’s general state aid by about 1.5 percent, or roughly $825,000 for the Lawrence district.

In its ruling, the court said restoring the old formula and fully funding it would be one way the Legislature could restore equity. But it also left open the possibility that there could be other ways of doing it as well.

However, the court warned that if lawmakers chose to use any other method, they should build a record to show why they believe any other method would satisfy the Kansas Constitution’s requirement for equitable funding.

Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, said that was the purpose of hiring an outside attorney and conducting the special hearing Monday.

“That’s because our traditional methods (of building records) have not been considered as evidence by the court,” he said. “There’s been a consistent request, ‘lack of evidence, lack of evidence.'”

But Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said she did not think the hearing would change the Supreme Court’s mind.

“We’re trying to put into the testimony the things that will justify the actions that we’ve taken, even though I would suggest no matter what we put in the record, the actions we’ve taken to date are not going to pass court muster,” she said.