The Kansas Supreme Court’s recent mandate to raise K-12 school funding in the state has produced considerable heat but precious little light in the Kansas Legislature.

Political rhetoric and posturing is blazing, but there’s hardly a spark of statesmanship to be found.

If the future of the state and its students were everyone’s top priority, the governor now would be sitting down with the leaders of the Kansas House and Senate to discuss how best to respond to the court’s direction to put an additional $143 million into school funding by the end of this month. Their goal would be to formulate a plan they could jointly announce and endorse. Their combined support would be a strong recommendation for other lawmakers.

Instead, various Kansas legislators are declaring war on the Supreme Court, the governor and one another. Kansans can hope that, at some point in the next few weeks, cooler heads will prevail, but the intensity with which some legislators are reacting to the court’s ruling will make that a difficult task.

Some legislators are advocating a mutiny against the Supreme Court in the form of impeachment proceedings against the justices or simply ignoring the court’s order. They contend that the court has overstepped its power by ordering the Legislature to allocate a set amount of money by a specific deadline. It was an unusual move, but it’s probably preferable to the court’s other logical course of action, which would have been to simply take over the schools.

Political motivation shines through almost every action or statement being made about this situation. Conservative Republicans, who are leading the charge against the court, are determined to prove their anti-tax credentials. House Speaker Doug Mays, the only declared Republican candidate for governor in next year’s election, has an obvious motivation not to work with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who is expected to seek re-election. Some legislators are calling on Sebelius to propose a plan, but it’s hard to imagine any plan proposed by the governor, a single legislative leader or even a small group of legislators would be anything more than a target for political annihilation.

A few moderate Republicans, mostly in the Senate, are trying to lower the volume on the debate, and Senate President Steve Morris has agreed to put key Senate committees to work on the problem before the scheduled special session on June 22. Mays, on the other hand, has refused to call anyone back to lay any groundwork ahead of June 22.

At this point, it’s hard to see what the debate and rhetoric has to do with doing the right thing for Kansas children. Maybe the additional $142 million the Legislature appropriated for next year was enough, but the state was unable to prove that amount reflected the actual cost of properly educating Kansas students.

Perhaps a study legislators have commissioned for next year will provide a better guide. Kansas students continue to perform above national averages on standardized tests, and the average per-pupil spending by federal, state and local sources was over $9,200 in 2003-2004, the last year for which statistics are available. That puts Kansas about in the middle compared with other states, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Kansas schools must be doing something right.

But in the meantime, legislators must decide whether it’s more important to draw a line in the sand or take action that will keep Kansas schools moving forward. It’s true that money shouldn’t be the only measure of a good school system, but neither should the state ignore its responsibility to provide funding for a strong and relatively equitable educational opportunity for its young people.

That’s what this debate should be about – not who can shout the loudest or score the most political points.