Lawmaking sometimes is compared to making sausage: It’s a messy business that you might not want to watch if you plan to eat the finished product.

The “process” currently under way in the Kansas Legislature, however, seems to have more in common with a schoolyard standoff. In the minds of a certain number of legislators, the Kansas Supreme Court has thrown the first punch by ordering an increase in school funding, and legislators aren’t about to back down from a fight. So focused are they at revenge against the court that they have lost sight of the effect their vendetta may have on the state and its schools.

As of Tuesday afternoon, conservative House Republicans were refusing to even consider a funding package for schools until they could get two-thirds of the House to approve a constitutional amendment “clarifying” the powers of the courts and, while they’re at it, the governor. House Democrats and moderate Republicans said no. An amendment already passed by the Senate would amend the Kansas Constitution to say that “The executive and judicial branches shall have no authority to direct the legislative branch to make any appropriation of money.” That power, they contend, belongs exclusively to the legislative branch.

Legislators have taken offense at the court’s specific order to add an additional $143 million in school funding by this Friday. How much money they raise is none of the court’s business, they say. That’s one side of the argument, but there’s also a matter of practicality.

The court told legislators back in January that they needed to raise more money for education and that the figure they arrived at must have some relation to the actual cost of educating the state’s young people. At the end of the session, the court found that the Legislature didn’t have any objective, nonpolitical basis for its school funding allocation, so the court measured the amount lawmakers had approved against the only evidence it had on the record – the Augenblick & Myers study earlier commissioned by the Legislature – and found the allocation lacking.

At this point, the court had several options. It could have held up all school funding. It could have told legislators to raise more money but made them guess how much more. Or the justices could say, as they did, here’s the figure we will accept for this year; if you raise this much, we will allow the schools to continue to operate. After that, you’ll have a year to raise more money or present us a better basis on which to determine the actual cost of K-12 education.

Higher-than-expected state revenues actually would have allowed legislators to quickly approve a one-year solution to this problem without a tax increase. They then could turn their energies between now and the next legislative session to revamping the basis for school funding, finding new funding sources (like gambling) or even passing amendments to curb the power of the court.

Instead, legislators are determined to make a point. At least senators are making their point and moving forward by passing both a constitutional amendment and a funding plan. House leaders, on the other hand, refused to have committees do any advance work on the funding issue and now are allowing members to engage in an expensive and unproductive standoff.

While at least some Kansas legislators are playing this game for political points, the future of Kansas schools is hanging in the balance. In the long run, it’s Kansas students who stand to lose the most.