TOPEKA — As school officials, lawmakers and Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration open discussions about writing a new school finance formula, expect to hear a lot of discussion about “putting money in the classroom.”

This has been a long-running debate whenever people talk about how much Kansas does or doesn’t spend on schools, and how much additional money is or isn’t needed to keep up with rising costs.

Conservative groups in particular like to emphasize “classroom” spending, also referred to as “instructional” spending to distinguish it from things like the high salaries of administrators, or bond and interest costs to pay for football stadiums and basketball arenas.

The subject came up almost immediately Wednesday when Brownback held a news conference with Education Commissioner Randy Watson and Kansas State Board of Education Chairman Jim McNiece.

First, there was Brownback reading some prepared opening remarks that touched on some broad, unifying themes about focusing on the needs of individual students and the challenge of preparing them for success, “in an increasingly competitive world.”

But then he added: “A new funding system must increase the percentage of state funding that gets to the classroom.”

A few minutes later, McNiece talked about the state board’s new “vision” for Kansas schools, which puts a lot more emphasis on the needs of individual students. More specifically, it suggests a larger role in the future for guidance counselors, social workers and other kinds of professionals to help students and their parents chart their own educational path, geared toward their own unique needs, interests and college or career plans.

What might have escaped most observers’ notice is that those two sets of ambitions are almost diametrically opposed to one another. That’s because, under standard definitions used in both state and federal education agencies, guidance counselors, social workers and a whole host of other services that schools provide to students don’t count as “instructional” programming.

Instructional services under those definitions include only the cost of teachers, teachers’ aides, clerks and graders, and equipment that assists in the instructional process.

Counselors and social workers, however, are in a whole other category of “student support services.” Also in that category are school nurses and other health aides, speech pathologists, audiologists and substance abuse counselors.

School library and media services are in yet another category of “instructional support services.”

That’s why, when looking at budget summaries for the Lawrence school district, for example, the official tables show only 57 percent of all the money the district spent from its general fund and local option budget last year went for “instruction,” while Kansas statutes express a policy “goal” that at least 65 percent of the money go toward instruction.

McNiece bristled when asked during the news conference how the board plans to sell its new “Kansas Can” vision to the Legislature during discussions about a new finance formula.

“You’re talking to a former high school principal who lived this every day,” McNiece said. “I would tell people this for years, and not to be argumentative, but everything goes to the classroom. Everything touches the classroom. We don’t do anything in the schools that doesn’t touch the classroom.”

McNiece said he personally would like to rewrite the definition of instructional spending to include more kinds of services. It’s something that the Kansas Association of School Boards and other organizations have suggested as well.

That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, however, because those definitions were developed by the U.S. Department of Education, and they are used by everybody, from the Census Bureau down to local units of government, as a standard way of measuring and comparing education cost figures nationwide.

That means they will also be used in political debates by groups fighting over how much money to spend on education, and where to spend it. And the public will just need to know what the words actually mean when they’re used in those debates.