Topeka ? Noticeably absent from legislative agendas rolled out this week by House Republicans and Democrats is perhaps the biggest issue of the session: public school finance.

“I’m concerned that everybody in Topeka is willing to pretend that we don’t have a court order, and that our kids can wait,” Kathy Cook, executive director of Kansas Families United for Public Education, said Tuesday.

At close to $3 billion per year, school funding makes up half of the state budget.

Last year, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled lawmakers had unconstitutionally underfunded schools and that the distribution method shorted students who need funding the most.

After a bitter special legislative session, the court accepted a $290 million funding increase as a down payment on what a legislative cost study would determine was necessary to provide adequate funding.

The cost study released last month said the Legislature needed to increase funding by $400 million to $470 million, with most of that money going to programs for low-income, special education and limited English-proficiency students.

But legislative packages touted by the two House caucuses range from cutting taxes to outlawing flavored cigarettes.

Since the release of the school cost study, leaders from both parties have said the only consensus they have reached is that the state cannot afford $400 million in one year, and instead will try to reach that figure over several years.

“It will bleed us white,” House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka, said if the Legislature were to approve a $400 million increase this year.

“The state has to balance a variety of interests,” House Democratic Leader Dennis McKinney, of Greensburg, said.

Cook, with the public school advocacy group based in Johnson County, said such talk was “disconcerting.”

“It doesn’t seem like anyone is really focused on what the cost study says,” Cook said. “Sometimes they seem to think that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over this case.”

Alan Rupe, an attorney for the plaintiff school districts that won the lawsuit, has said he will wait to see how the Legislature responds to the cost study before deciding whether further legal challenges are necessary.

He also has said the $400 million figure cited by the study was probably the minimum that the school districts would accept.

Both Mays and McKinney said that although their legislative plans didn’t specify a school finance measure, it is understood that the Legislature has to produce a proposal. And they said talks are going on behind the scenes to reach consensus on certain issues.

“It’s so obvious, we didn’t feel like it was needed” to be put in the House Republican legislative agenda, Mays said.

“We know it’s out there,” McKinney said of school finance. “We know it has to be solved.”

On the agenda

Meanwhile, House Democrats said their agenda would outlaw the sale of violent or sexually explicit videos to minors, ban flavored cigarettes and require Internet providers to provide information on predators to law enforcement agencies in a timely manner.

Another measure pushed by Democrats would provide financial assistance to low-income grandparents who are foster parents to their grandchildren.

Earlier, House Republicans released their legislative wish list of tax cuts and get-tough-on-crime proposals.

With an 83-42 majority in the House, Republicans said they had a good chance of winning approval of most of their proposals.

The Republican list includes harsher penalties for sexual predators and creating an expanded DNA database.

For businesses, Republicans hope to phase out the franchise tax and the property tax on machinery and equipment, and limit damages in civil lawsuits.

Their proposal also includes a three-day sales tax “holiday” on clothing and back-to-school supplies.