photo by: Peter Hancock

? The Kansas House on Tuesday passed a school funding bill that would phase in more than $500 million a year in new education funding over the next five years, one day after rejecting the same bill.

On Monday, House Bill 2445 received only 55 votes in favor of advancing it to final action, while 65 members opposed it.

One day later, though, after only one minor amendment was added dealing with how out-of-state students are funded, the House not only voted to advance the bill to final action but also took that final vote. It then passed, 71-53.

“I think people had more time to look at the numbers and get more comfortable with where we’re at to balance the rest of the budget,” House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe, told reporters after the vote.

The bill is intended to address a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in October that declared current funding for public schools to be inadequate and unconstitutional.

While the debate in the House was taking place, the Senate Select Committee on Education Finance was holding its own meeting, working on a school funding bill that would add only about half as much money for schools over five years as the House version.

Democrats in the House were divided on the bill, which some argued was still too little to satisfy the Supreme Court’s order.

From the Lawrence delegation, Democrat Barbara Ballard and Republican Tom Sloan voted for the bill, while Democrats Boog Highberger and Eileen Horn voted no.

But the tension over school funding heated up later in the day Tuesday when Republican leaders in the Senate said they would not debate a school funding bill until lawmakers put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to take away the authority of courts to rule on questions of whether the Legislature has provided adequate funding.

Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, and Majority Leader Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, said they want the cycle of litigation over school funding to end, the Associated Press reported.

Those comments drew a sharp rebuke from Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka, who accused Wagle and Denning of throwing a “temper tantrum” and said in a statement that the two “are acting like school-yard bullies.”

The Senate, however, has not even considered such an amendment yet this session, although the House Judiciary Committee, which held an extensive hearing on such an amendment Tuesday, could vote today on whether to send it to the full House.

The proposed amendment, which would give the Legislature exclusive authority to determine what constitutes suitable funding for schools, has support from a number of business and agricultural interest groups, including the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Kansas Farm Bureau.

Those groups are organized under the name “Kansas Coalition for Fair Funding,” a name that is not to be confused with “Schools for Fair Funding,” the coalition of Kansas school districts that are plaintiffs in the current lawsuit before the Supreme Court.

It also drew qualified support from the chairmen of three influential House committees: Appropriations Committee chairman Troy Waymaster, R-Bunker Hill; Education Committee Chairman Clay Aurand, R-Belleville; and Taxation Committee chairman Steven Johnson, R-Assaria. They each said that while they may not agree with the wording of the amendment, they agree that the school finance provisions of the Kansas Constitution need to be changed.

But the proposal has drawn sharp opposition from pro-education groups such as Game On for Kansas Schools, which helped elect a number of Democrats and moderate Republicans to the Legislature in 2016.

“I think it is wrong to change the rules of the game because you don’t like the score,” Erin Gould, a member of the Game On leadership board, said during the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing Tuesday

Lawmakers are trying to resolve the school finance issue before they adjourn the regular session at the end of this week and then leave the Statehouse for a three-week break.

The Supreme Court has given the state until April 30 to file briefs explaining what the Legislature has done to comply with its earlier order.