Topeka ? The Senate Education Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday on a proposal that could become the framework for a new, revised school funding formula.

The proposal by Sen. Steve Abrams, R-Arkansas City, who chairs the committee, comes after lawmakers last week passed and sent to Gov. Sam Brownback a bill that repeals the existing formula and replaces it with a system of block grants for the next two years.

Abrams’ measure, Senate Bill 294, would not change that for most school districts. But it would set up a pilot program that would initially apply to only six school districts during the first year, and as many as 106 districts in the second year.

The first six districts are those that have been designated “public innovative school districts.” Those districts are allowed to exempt themselves from many state laws and regulations governing public schools in exchange for submitting a plan showing how that increased flexibility will enable them to improve student achievement.

They currently include the Concordia, McPherson, Kansas City, Marysville, Hugoton and Blue Valley districts.

Abrams’ bill calls for returning to a per-pupil-based funding system, with funding initially set at $3,820, slightly less than this year’s funding level.

But in place of the current “weighting” formulas that provide additional funding for at-risk, bilingual and other categories of students who are considered more expensive to educate, Abrams’ bill provides three other kinds of supplemental aid based on each district’s poverty level, the relative sparsity of its population, and how successful its graduates are in college or the workplace five years after graduating high school.

It would also continue to allow districts to levy additional local property taxes to supplement their budgets, but it provides a completely different “equalization” formula to subsidize the budgets of less wealthy districts.

Currently, that equalization aid is based on the district’s per-pupil assessed valuation, a measure of a district’s ability to raise revenue through local property taxes. Abrams’ formula would use a combination of per-pupil valuation, median household income and median home values in the district.

In addition, Abrams’ plans would put more controls over state funding that is used to subsidize bond and interest payments for schools. Although aid would still be available, the bill calls for establishing a review board made up of legislative leaders who would have to review and approve a school district’s bond proposal before the district could submit it to voters.

The Kansas State Department of Education said Monday it had not finished analyzing the bill to determine how it would affect each school district. But Abrams said the overall funding under his plan would be roughly the same as what those districts are expected to receive under the recently passed block grant bill. Brownback is expected to sign that bill.

Abrams said he hopes that his bill can also be passed by both chambers this session, although time is quickly running out for the session.

“We’ll see what happens,” Abrams said.