However daunting the task may be, Kansas legislators must put forth a school-funding plan this session. There simply is no reasonable excuse not to do so.

In 2015, Kansas lawmakers repealed the existing school funding formula, replacing it with a block-grant system that effectively froze funding in place for the next two years. During the two-year period, lawmakers were to write a new formula. That timetable is now less than six months away and little progress has been made.

That has to change. Now. The 2017 Legislature and its 50 new members owe it to Kansas’ taxpayers to develop and approve a new formula. There isn’t a legislator who didn’t know this was necessary when he or she decided to run. Many were elected largely on their promise to address school funding.

It won’t be easy. The Kansas Supreme Court has established a new legal standard for judging whether overall funding is adequate. In the school finance lawsuit Montoy v. Kansas in 2005 the court ruled funding must be based on the cost of providing the educational services the state required. In 2014, in the current lawsuit Gannon v. Kansas, the court set a new legal standard, one based on educational outcomes. Funding must be sufficient to ensure that when students graduate, they have sufficient knowledge and skills in specific areas.

And there is the enormous political problem of writing a formula that is both equitable and acceptable to a majority of the state’s 286 school districts. The state’s wealthiest school districts, which theoretically have the most to lose in developing a new formula that makes funding more equitable, also have the most political influence and historically have wielded that influence very effectively to limit or quash plans that reduce their level of state funding.

The 1992 school funding plan provided a base amount of funding per pupil for each district, with additional funds made available for difficult to educate populations such as low-income students and English language learners. That continues to be the most logical foundation for a school-funding plan.

In recent years, there has been a significant lack of pragmatism and compromise during Kansas legislative sessions. But if this group of legislators is going to write a school finance formula in six months, they need to acquire a healthy dose of both pretty quick. Because failing to approve a plan simply isn’t excusable.