After three relatively quiet weeks to start off the session, Kansas lawmakers will start getting down to serious business on Monday with mid-year budget cuts, school funding changes and a massive overhaul of the state’s juvenile justice system leading the agenda.

First up is Gov. Sam Brownback’s plan for closing the potential shortfall in the current fiscal year’s budget. Much of that plan was announced in November when new revenue estimates were released showing the seriousness of the problem, but many of the elements require legislative approval.

Overall, the plan calls for $30 million in direct spending cuts from the state general fund, plus sweeping money out of other funds into the general fund in order to prevent the state from ending the year on June 30 with a negative balance.

But the size of the budget hole could change as early as Monday afternoon when the Department of Revenue releases its report on tax collections for the month of January. Analysts will be paying close attention to the sales tax figures because January’s report should reflect sales taxes that retailers collected and remitted to the state over the entire holiday shopping season.

After lawmakers raised the state sales tax rate to 6.5 percent last year, the question many are asking is whether that increase actually generated more revenue or simply drove consumers to shop in border states, or even online.

Meanwhile, the House Education Committee plans to work through bills that could radically change the way public schools are organized and financed. Although none of them constitute a new school funding “formula,” which lawmakers will have to do either this year or next, the three bills up for discussion this week still would have profound effects on school funding for years to come.

The first, House Bill 2504, would force the consolidation of more than half of the state’s school districts by establishing singular, countywide districts in counties with 10,000 or fewer students. And in larger counties, including Douglas County, it would require all remaining districts to have no fewer than 1,500 students.

That would force the Baldwin City school district to be combined into either the Lawrence or Eudora districts. And it would force all six districts in Jefferson County to be merged into one.

But the bill does not specify what would happen to all of the boards of education in the merged districts. Education groups like the Kansas Association of School Boards are already raising alarm bells about “one-person-one-vote” problems if a single, central administration is placed in charge of administering schools that answer to multiple boards in which board members are elected from districts of vastly different sizes.

Also on the Education Committee’s schedule this week is a bill that would set up a special legislative committee that would decide which school bond issues will be eligible for state funding aid, and a bill to expand a program that offers tax credits for contribution to private and parochial school scholarship funds.

On the Senate side of the rotunda, the Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee will spend most of the week conducting hearings on a massive overhaul of the state’s juvenile justice system.

Senate Vice President Jeff King, R-Independence, said the overall aim of the bill is to reduce the number of youth offenders who are incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities by putting more emphasis on community corrections programs that would let offenders remain in their homes and in school. But he said there are a lot of moving parts to the 110-page bill that will take many days of testimony and debate in both chambers.

Other issues up for debate in legislative committees this week include:

• Additional restrictions on welfare benefits, including a provision to monitor whether any welfare recipients have received more than $10,000 in lottery winnings. Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, 1:30 p.m. Monday.

• A bill that could subject teachers to criminal prosecution if they provide or display sexually explicit material deemed harmful to minors. The bill passed the Kansas Senate last year. It will be heard in the House Judiciary Committee at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

• Final action in the House Federal and State Affairs Committee at 9 a.m. Wednesday on a bill requiring school districts to provide access to their facilities by air gun organizations; and a constitutional amendment to guarantee the public’s right to hunt, fish and trap.

• A bill to prohibit cities and counties from enacting ordinances or resolutions declaring themselves “sanctuary cities” to prevent detention or deportation of undocumented immigrants. House Judiciary Committee, 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.

• And a bill lowering the minimum age for obtaining a concealed carry permit to 18. House Federal and State Affairs Committee, 9:30 a.m. Thursday.