Members of the Senate and House Education committees agreed to consider the bills, which were backed by a majority of the K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Commission, a group of nine business leaders and educators who were appointed by lawmakers.

The two bills would create two more committees of nonlawmakers. One group would establish guidelines and one would establish measurable standards for determining whether efficiency goals are being met.

“I’m not sure we’re any closer to being able to move ahead as elected officials,” Sen. Pat Pettey, a retired teacher and member of the education committee, said after the meeting.

The efficiency studies come as lawmakers are facing the prospect of being forced to find at least $548 million more per year to pay for public schools after a Shawnee County District Court panel ruled in late December that current funding levels are constitutionally inadequate.

That ruling likely will be appealed to the state Supreme Court, but until then the issue is casting a dark cloud over a session in which the Legislature also must find a way to plug a $710 million shortfall — including $279 million for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Gov. Sam Brownback, whose plans for erasing the current year’s deficit with transfers from transportation and pension funds, is expected to unveil plans to address education funding later this week.

In addition to recommending the two bills Wednesday, the panel also presented two reports that resulted from 10 meetings that started in July. Sam Williams, chairman of the panel, said two reports were necessary because most of the issues the panel discussed received 5-4 votes.

The majority report recommended that the state continue to fund high-demand technical education programs that were broadly hailed by educators, and encouraged school districts to develop long-range strategic plans for capital expenditures.

Williams, who was in the commission’s minority, said his side supported outsourcing non-instructional tasks such as maintenance, custodial, food service and payroll work.

Minority members also pushed for more state oversight of how schools spend their money, Williams said, because many districts either didn’t understand the word “efficiency” or were intentionally operating inefficiently.

“Certainly his remarks reflected a bias that I have heard repeatedly that school districts don’t manage well, that they don’t know how to use their funds,” Pettey said.