Jeff King, left, a former senator now serving as the Legislature's legal counsel on school finance, confers with House Speaker Ron Ryckman during debate in the House on a new school funding system aimed at satisfying a Kansas Supreme Court decision that declared current funding inadequate and unconstitutional.

Topeka ? The Kansas House gave first-round approval Wednesday to a new school finance plan that would phase in a $280 million increase in annual K-12 school funding over the next two years.

The House voted 81-40 to advance the bill to final action. A final vote is expected Thursday.

At the same time, however, the House continued to struggle to find a mix of tax increases that can pass the House to fund that plan and close a looming revenue shortfall for the rest of the state budget.

That action came on the 100th day of the legislative session, which was scheduled to be the final day. But the Legislature’s failure to resolve the issues of budget, taxes and school finance in that time means the session will likely extend past the Memorial Day weekend.

“Today was a big day for us to advance our school finance bill and celebrate the hard work the committee did,” House Speaker Ron Ryckman, R-Olathe, said after the vote. “It was a major accomplishment for us to move that forward.”

The bill is aimed at responding to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in March that said current funding for Kansas public schools is inadequate and unconstitutional. The court gave lawmakers until June 30, the end of the fiscal year, to pass a funding plan that will meet constitutional muster, saying that it would order the public school system closed if such a plan was not passed.

That would put an immediate halt to summer school programs, as well as summer meal programs that serve more than a million free meals to low-income children during the summer.

Basics of the bill

The bill establishes a per-pupil funding system similar to the one lawmakers repealed in 2015 when they replaced it with a block grant system that effectively froze funding in place for all districts for two years.

It includes a uniform base amount of funding for each student in a district, with weighting factors to reflect the higher cost of educating low-income and bilingual students. It also allows districts to raise a limited amount of additional money through local property taxes.

The bill would increase base state aid next year to $4,006 per student, up from $3,852 the last time the state used a per-pupil formula. That would increase to $4,128 in the 2018-2019 school year. The per-pupil base would then be indexed to inflation in subsequent years.

It also puts new requirements on a controversial program that allows corporations to receive a tax credit for contributions they make to scholarship programs that enable students in low-performing schools to attend private schools. A proposed amendment by Rep. Jarrod Ousley, D-Merriam, to phase out that program entirely failed, 46-73.

These changes, among others, would cost the state $180 million in the first year and another $100 million the second year.

The Lawrence School District would see an increase of about $3.1 million in the first year, according to Kansas State Department of Education estimates. The Eudora School District would see a $638,000 increase in state aid, while state funding for the Baldwin City district would rise by nearly $453,000.

Democrats and some Republicans argued that is far short of what they believe it will take to meet the Kansas Supreme Court’s standard for adequate funding. But they came up far short when they offered an amendment to boost the funding increase to $200 million over each of the next three years.

Rep. Ed Trimmer, D-Winfield, offered that amendment, saying that would eventually bring per-pupil funding back to its 2008-2009 peak of roughly $4,400, before then-Gov. Mark Parkinson ordered cuts in the wake of the Great Recession.

But Republicans argued that would amount to a cumulative $1.2 billion cost over three years, which would require a tax increase far larger than most lawmakers are willing to accept.

The amendment failed, 47-75, when only nine Republicans crossed party lines to vote with 38 Democrats supporting the bill.

Lawrence Reps. Barbara Ballard and Boog Highberger, both Democrats, and Tom Sloan, a Republican, voted in favor of the amendment. Democratic Rep. John Wilson of Lawrence was absent for the vote. Republican Rep. Jim Karleskint of Tonganoxie, whose district includes Eudora and much of eastern Douglas County, voted against the amendment.

Rep. Melissa Rooker, R-Fairway, who served on the special committee that wrote the plan, said she was disappointed that the House didn’t put more money into the plan, and she doesn’t think it will satisfy the Supreme Court. But she said the underlying formula is good.

“I do fully support the formula that’s in this bill,” she said. “I for one, having worked for five months to put this formula together, I would so much rather be told ‘your formula is constitutional,’ but for the level of funding. I’d rather come back in special session and argue over money than have to start back with drafting a formula.”

But Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, who also served on the special committee, said that was small consolation.

“I like the formula framework, but the funding is the important thing,” Sawyer said.

Breaking the logjam

Just before the school finance debate began, Republican leaders in the House withdrew the latest tax package that had been hammered out the night before in a conference committee.

That bill, which leaders believed Gov. Sam Brownback would accept, appeared to have little support from either party caucus in the House. It would have raised a little less than $500 million in new revenue each year through a combination of income tax changes, sales taxes on selected services, and liquor taxes.

But Rep. Steven Johnson, R-Assaria, who chairs the House Taxation Committee, said passage of the school finance bill could help break the logjam in the Legislature that has stood in the way of passing a tax bill and a final budget for the next two years.

“The conference committee report (that was pulled Wednesday) is still there,” he said. “I don’t know if we run that. I know there are a couple of other suggestions that are in play, both that are more austere than that and certainly the previous ones that had more money that we’d raise. So we’ll regroup with leadership when they’re ready after this debate and see what we do.”

Sawyer, however, said the House’s school funding bill will likely result in a smaller tax bill than what Democrats have been pushing for.

“It probably means they can argue we need a smaller tax bill now since the education bill doesn’t have a lot of funding in it,” he said.

In the meantime, the Senate’s Select Committee on Education Finance advanced its own version of a school funding bill that would phase in a $240 million funding increase over two years. The Senate plans to debate that bill next week.

During debate in the House, several amendments were offered dealing with other education policy issues unrelated to funding, which House leaders ruled out of order.

One, by Rep. Trevor Jacobs, R-Fort Scott, would have prohibited schools from allowing transgender students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity.

Another, by Jerry Stogsdill, D-Prairie Village, would have reinstated teacher due process rights, also known as teacher tenure, which lawmakers repealed in 2015.

Still another, by Rep. John Whitmer, R-Wichita, would have required the Kansas State Board of Education to develop curriculum for a standardized firearms safety education program.