COLUMBIA--Public schools were the big winner Monday when a budget-writing committee reworked an agreement on the state's $5.3 billion spending plan.

The state Education Department picked up $8 million for new school buses that will come from unclaimed state lottery prize money. The deal reached last week did not help replace the aging fleet.

While the current year's budget, which ends June 30, already uses some lottery money to buy buses, Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman said more needs to be done.

Leatherman's comments came after six hours of negotiating Monday between three House members and three senators, who now have to sell the compromise to their colleagues when they return to their desks today.

Last week, the budget committee reached an agreement after working from 8 p.m. Wednesday to just before 7 a.m. Thursday. While the House adopted the measure, the Senate rejected it.

That frustrated House Ways and Means Chairman Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston. On Monday, he handed out examples from budgets stretching back to 1998 that weren't challenged.

The "new and improved" deal, Harrell said, will "get us out of this unprecedented situation in which we find ourselves."

Harrell and Leatherman, R-Florence, said they don't want a repeat of last week.

"I would hope the Senate would go ahead and do the people's business as, frankly, they should have done last week," Leatherman said.

The two legislators talked about potential compromises with others on their negotiating teams.

Leatherman's conferees were able to get House negotiators to dump proposals that would have let districts spend less on public schools and forced more record checks to determine eligibility for Medicaid.

House conferees kept state funding for an abstinence-based sex education program they favor and won detailed reviews of the state Medicaid program along with notice to lawmakers when changes are made in eligibility or the scope of programs offered.

The committee agreed to put $40 million in state lottery money into a kindergarten through fifth-grade reading program, up from $37 million in last week's budget deal.

Before the conference committee met, House Minority Leader James Smith, D-Columbia, lashed out at leadership in the GOP-controlled Legislature.

While the state had been making gains in education, "the Republican majority's budget mess will not only bring that progress to a halt but will send our state full speed in the wrong direction," he said.