TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Top Republicans advanced an education funding plan Thursday in the Kansas Legislature as the best way to satisfy a court mandate, pushing past doubts that it would avert a threatened shutdown of the state's public schools.

House and Senate committees approved separate but identical bills to boost state aid to poor school districts by $38 million in 2016-17. With Kansas facing an ongoing budget crunch, the plan mostly shuffles existing education dollars, redistributing money from 141 of the state's 286 districts, starting with wealthy ones.

Each Republican-dominated chamber planned to debate the plan Friday.

Lawmakers convened a special session Thursday to address a state Supreme Court order issued last month, and GOP leaders would like to wrap up the work Friday.

The urgency is dictated by the Supreme Court's warning in its ruling that schools might not be able to reopen after June 30 if lawmakers don't make education funding changes by then. The justices said the state's education funding system remains unfair to poor school districts, despite three rounds of changes in three years.