Kansas legislative leaders appear to be in denial on the issue of public school finance.

The Kansas Supreme Court has ordered the Legislature to provide a new, more equitable way to fund the state’s K-12 public schools by June 30. If legislators fail to meet that deadline, the ruling says, the state will not have a valid funding mechanism for those schools. Without state funds the schools cannot operate.

That seems like an important matter, but members of the Kansas House and Senate are blithely going about the business of passing a budget for the next fiscal year without even discussing how the state will meet its court-ordered obligation to fund schools.

Last week, both the House and Senate passed revised budgets for fiscal year 2017, which starts on July 1, without even discussing the school finance issue. On Monday, a conference committee representing both houses reconciled the two proposals and passed a compromise budget, again without any school discussion. That proposal may be considered by the full House and Senate later this week.

Senate budget committee chairman Ty Masterson, R-Andover, said the court opinion was irrelevant to the budget debate and called Democratic efforts to raise the issue “nothing more than an opportunity to politically grandstand on a hot topic.”

House budget chairman Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe, said that lawmakers could talk about schools later. “There’s no reason to hold the rest of the state budget hostage on one issue.”

Here’s one reason: The original House and Senate budgets committed all but about $6 million of the state’s expected general fund revenue, but state education officials estimate it would cost about $70 million this year and $39 million next year to comply with the court’s ruling. Where will that money come from?

Last year, legislators instituted a block-grant system that essentially keeps school funding flat for two years. During that time, they said they planned to write a new school finance formula. That was almost a year ago, but there appears to have been little progress on that task. Faced with the June 30 deadline, legislators are taking a head-in-the-sand approach to the problem. Rather than reinstating the previous school finance formula or stepping up efforts to write a new plan, they are refusing, at least for now, to acknowledge the unpleasant reality they face.

Legislators seem to be hoping this problem will go away, but it won’t. They may think the Supreme Court would never close Kansas schools and they’re going to call the court’s bluff — or if, by some chance, schools close, Kansans will blame the court, not the Legislature.

If that’s what they’re thinking, they could be seriously misreading the Kansas public. Meeting the state’s obligation to fund public school is a real responsibility that requires some real leadership that seems to be sorely lacking in the Legislature right now.