Kansas Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, center, R-Overland Park, confers with lawmakers in both chambers following the Senate's approval of a school funding bill, Wednesday, May 31, 2017, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Republicans are pushing the Legislature toward passing an increase that even some GOP lawmakers concede might not be large enough to satisfy a court mandate (AP Photo/John Hanna).

Topeka ? The Kansas Senate gave final passage Wednesday morning to a school finance bill that would phase in a $236 million increase over the next two years.

The 23-16 vote sent the Senate’s plan to the House, which earlier passed its own version of a school funding plan that adds about $280 million over the next two years. Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, said he hoped the two chambers could begin conference negotiations later in the day, although no meetings were called Wednesday, the 103rd day of the session.

Democrats in both chambers said they believe both bills fall short of what will be needed to satisfy the Kansas Supreme Court, which struck down the current funding structure in March, saying it was inadequate and unconstitutional.

“I believe that this bill is riddled with flaws, both from an adequacy and equity standpoint and that it is unconstitutional,” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said.

Hensley said he would file a “constitutional protest” of the bill to be entered in the Senate journal. That was a reference to Article 2, Section 10 of the Kansas Constitution, which states, “Any member of either house may make written protest against any act or resolution, and the same shall be entered in the journal without delay or alteration.”

Such a protest usually has no legal effect. But it may catch the attention of the Supreme Court when it reviews the Legislature’s final work later this summer.

Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, voted against the bill. Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, voted “pass,” meaning she was present but not voting yes or no.

The Senate bill was based largely on the House plan. Both bills would reinstate a per-pupil funding system similar to the one lawmakers repealed in 2015, setting the “base” per-pupil aid at $4,006 for the upcoming school year.

Under the Senate plan, that base amount would go up to $4,080 in the 2018-2019 school, and would be indexed to inflation after that. The House bill would raise the base amount to $4,128 in the second year, then be indexed to inflation.

Denning, who was the chief architect of the Senate’s plan, said the $4,080 per-pupil figure was based on information that he said came from the Kansas State Department of Education, which looked at per-pupil spending in “successful schools,” or those in which students perform better than expected academically, given their demographic makeup.

“By providing hundreds of millions of dollars in increased base state aid, as determined by experts and applied by Kansas’ most successful schools, House Bill 2186 is reasonably calculated to promote student success,” Denning said in his explanation of his vote, borrowing language from the Supreme Court’s most recent ruling in the long-running lawsuit Gannon v. Kansas.

Both bills also would continue the policy of allowing school districts to raise additional money through local property taxes to fund “local option budgets.” The Senate bill, however, would give school boards more authority to raise those tax levies on their own, without requiring a public vote.

Both also provide funding for all-day kindergarten and add money for preschool programs that target 4-year-olds from low-income families.

One key difference, though, is that the House bill provides slightly more “weighting” for students deemed to be at risk of failing or dropping out.

The Lawrence school district would see an increase of $3.1 million in state aid next year under the Senate plan and $3.4 million under the House plan. The Senate’s bill also would give Lawrence access to about $1.4 million more local option budget money.

An earlier version of the Senate bill had included a controversial funding provision that would have imposed a $3 tax on residential water, gas and electric utility bills, but that provision was stripped out in committee before it reached the House floor.