Editorial: Call the session

Kansas officials need to tone down their rhetoric and figure out at least a short-term solution to keep K-12 public schools open.

The governor and state legislators can protest and posture all they want, but their rhetoric won’t do anything to resolve the state’s school finance crisis. The only way progress can be made is through a special legislative session, which Gov. Sam Brownback should schedule as soon as possible.

The Legislature’s decision this week to end its regular session without any meaningful attempt to address a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that threatens to cut off state funding to K-12 schools on July 1 was beyond disappointing to most Kansans. Instead of having any constructive discussions about the issue, the governor and legislators focused their attention on criticizing the court and trying to figure out ways to circumvent the court’s ruling that the current school funding plan has equity flaws that make it unconstitutional.

Their biggest complaint was that the court was, in Brownback’s words, “playing politics with our children’s education,” as if the actions of the legislative and executive branches in this matter had no political motivations. Individual lawmakers also suggested simply defying the court’s order and taking such desperate measures as proposing a constitutional amendment that would bar the court from closing schools or passing a bill saying the state treasurer couldn’t be found in contempt if he continued to disburse funds to school districts.

Any of those actions would only move Kansas closer to a serious constitutional crisis pitting branches of government against one another.

Is that what lawmakers think the people of Kansas want? At least one legislator, Sen. Dan Kerschen, R-Garden Plain, was talking some sense Wednesday, saying lawmakers should try to comply with the court ruling because that’s what the public wants. “What about the court of public opinion?” he asked. “Who wins that battle? Because we’re losing it right now.”

Attacking the members of the Supreme Court may be a valid strategy for November elections, but it does nothing to solve the problem at hand, which is how to keep the K-12 public schools in Kansas open. One solution that likely would be accepted by the court, at least in the short term, is a return to the school finance formula that was in place before the state switched to a block grant system for this fiscal year and next. That would cost the state about $38 million during the next fiscal year, less than 1 percent of the K-12 budget.

Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, compared allocating that money to paying ransom. His comparison is stunningly apt. Right now, the children of Kansas are the hostages in a damaging political standoff. Some of the public officials may pay a political price for their role in this situation, but the people who stand to lose the most are the children of Kansas.

They and the rest of the state deserve better. The governor needs to schedule a special session, and legislators need to return to Topeka with something other than political vengeance on their minds. Get this matter resolved before Kansas once again becomes a national poster child for dysfunctional government.