Scores of advocates for public education funding will converge on the Statehouse this week to draw attention to their agenda, but conservatives in the Kansas Legislature are already several steps ahead of them, with a number of education-related bills lined up for hearings and final action.

Advocates organized under the umbrella group Game On for Kansas Schools spent their weekend in what has become an annual ritual, marching through drizzle and rain from Johnson County, Emporia and Manhattan, with plans to converge on the Statehouse on Monday.

Related story: For fourth straight year, school advocates marching to Topeka, but stakes are higher than ever

The drama takes place against the backdrop of a February Kansas Supreme Court ruling that some of the changes lawmakers made to school funding last year violate the Kansas Constitution’s requirement that state funding for schools be distributed equitably among all the state’s school districts.

The court essentially gave the Legislature two options: go back to the old formula for distributing so-called “equalization aid” for local school districts, money that subsidizes their capital outlay and local option budgets, and provide full funding for that formula; or, option B, come up with some other formula and provide to the court a record of evidence showing why that new formula meets the Kansas Constitution’s requirement for equitable funding.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, House and Senate budget committees will hold hearings on competing bills that aim to do just that. On Tuesday, the House will consider a bill aimed at addressing the first option, one that House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ron Ryckman says would cost about $37 million next year. And on Wednesday, the Senate Ways and Means Committee will consider an option B plan, which merely redistributes money already appropriated.

As an added incentive, the court has placed a veritable Sword of Damocles over the Legislature’s head by threatening to close public schools on July 1 if the Legislature doesn’t come up with a satisfactory answer to options A or B.

And that may be the focus of discussion Wednesday when the Senate Ways and Means Committee holds hearings on another newly introduced bill — so new, in fact, that it didn’t yet have an assigned bill number and its contents hadn’t yet been published by the weekend — which deals with the subject of “court ordered redistribution of school district funds.”

Lawmakers are now entering the final two-week stretch of the 2016 regular legislative session. They are tentatively scheduled to adjourn March 25, at which point they will break for about a month and return in late April for the final “wrap-up” session.

Here’s a look at some other education-related issues coming up in committees this week:

• On Monday, the Senate Ways and Means Committee could take action on Senate Bill 499, requiring school districts to strategically source specific spend categories through the Department of Administration.

• Also Monday, the House Education Committee takes up Senate Bill 136, which passed the Senate last year, limiting the subjects of contract negotiations between school districts and teachers unions; and House Bill 2486, requiring school districts to get approval from a legislative review board before they can qualify for state aid for bond issues.

The Senate Education Committee is also scheduled to work on a school bond review board bill on Thursday.

• And the House Insurance Committee takes up a bill Thursday that would create a state-based insurance exchange exclusively for retired public employees, many of whom are former teachers, and eliminating their option to continue coverage through the State Employee Health Plan.