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Lawrence-area school officials hailed a judge's order Tuesday directing state lawmakers to create a constitutional system for financing public schools.

But they are not optimistic legislators will meet the political and budgetary challenges of approving a new formula in 2004.

"If the Legislature wants to purely abdicate their responsibility, then that's what they'd do, which will be consistent with what they've been doing," said Lawrence Supt. Randy Weseman.

Terry Bullock, a Shawnee County District Court judge, on Tuesday issued an order declaring the state's current school-finance formula unconstitutional. He gave the Legislature and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius until July 1 to fix the problems.

Weseman said he agreed with Bullock's declaration that the system of distributing money to districts must be revised. Districts such as Lawrence with large, diverse student populations receive less financial support per student from the state than smaller districts. The amount districts receive varies as much as $10,000 per pupil.

"The current system rewards homogeneous systems that are small and inefficient," Weseman said.

Jim White, superintendent of schools in Baldwin, said the state formula for appropriating $2.6 billion annually to Kansas districts was severely underfinanced.

A 2001 report commissioned by the Legislature found the state was underfunding schools by $852 million.

"The lack of ongoing commitment to funding at the appropriate levels has caused this district, and I'm sure many others across the state of Kansas, to not be appropriately funded," White said.

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He said lawmakers might have avoided court intrusion had they worked diligently to improve the 1992 school-finance law, which sets the current funding structure.

"It's frustrating from a school administrator's standpoint that they haven't," White said. "They turned their back on it."

Lawrence school board president Austin Turney said the ruling by Bullock rightly lambasted the Legislature for not meeting the needs of all districts.

"It couldn't be more critical," Turney said of the judge's order.

Weseman also agreed with Bullock's criticism that the current school-finance system was the product of political deal-making. And he said he expected political posturing would undermine debate on a new formula, as well.

"I have great respect for our (Douglas County legislative) delegation," Weseman said, "but as a whole I've seen them (the Kansas Legislature) trade off the education of the children in the state of Kansas for political gain."