photo by: Peter Hancock

Rep. Ed Trimmer, right, D-Winfield, answers questions from Rep. John Whitmer, R-Wichita, during debate Monday, April 2, 2018 in the House on a proposed school finance bill.

Topeka ? The Kansas House will have to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new school finance formula after rejecting one Monday that would have phased in an increase of more than $500 million per year in funding for public schools over the next five years.

After more than two hours of debate, a motion to advance the bill toward a final action vote failed on an unrecorded vote, 65-55.

The bill was aimed at responding to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in October that said current funding levels for public schools were inadequate and unconstitutional. But there was opposition to the bill, both from those who thought it added too little and those who said it would cost too much.

The bill would have gradually raised base state aid to local school districts from its current $4,006 per pupil up to $4,718 by the 2022-2023 school year.

Kansas state Reps. Blaine Finch, R-Ottawa, left, and Troy Waymaster, R-Waymaster, right, confer during a House debate on school funding, Monday, April 2, 2018, at the Statehouse in Topeka. Lawmakers are facing a Kansas Supreme Court mandate to boost spending on public schools. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

Rep. Fred Patton, R-Topeka, who chairs the House K-12 Education Budget Committee that produced the bill, said the numbers were based on funding levels in 2008, the last per-pupil funding formula that was found to be constitutional by the court, then adjusted for inflation and growth in student enrollment.

But Rep. Ed Trimmer, D-Winfield, the ranking Democrat on that panel, argued that the authors of the bill had miscalculated the inflation factor, and he offered an amendment to raise the base aid formula even more, to $5,145 per pupil in the fifth year of the plan — a change he said would add roughly $295 million to the five-year cost of the bill.

“If we’re going to argue, especially to the court, that that’s a rational approach to funding education, we need to use correct figures, and this amendment corrects those figures,” Trimmer said.

Conservatives, however, objected, saying the state’s long-term budget outlook does not support such an increase.

“This amendment wants to spend even more money that we don’t have and obligate a future Legislature to more money than we can obligate them to,” Rep. John Whitmer, R-Wichita, said about Trimmer’s amendment.

Trimmer argued that the state could afford the increase, citing a report issued earlier in the day showing the state has already collected $315 million more than expected this fiscal year, and could increase revenues even further by passing a bill to levy sales tax on internet sales. But his amendment failed, 76-46.

Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, offered a different kind of amendment that would essentially authorize the entire school finance budget to be used as vouchers for private schools if the court follows through on its threat to close public schools July 1 if lawmakers fail to pass a constitutional funding formula, but that amendment was shot down, 81-40.

House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe, told reporters immediately after the vote that the bill would remain on the calendar and would be debated again on Tuesday.