The people who led the battle to increase funding for K-12 public schools in Kansas believe they have the law on their side.

Maybe they do, but the idea that school funding must be held harmless in the state’s current financial crisis raises some fairness issues.

After the Kansas Supreme Court declared in 2005 that the state had unconstitutionally underfunded public schools in Kansas, legislators hammered out an agreement in 2006 that committed the state to a three-year, $466 million funding plan. That means the state already is obligated to $142 million in additional school funding for the next fiscal year — and the attorney who helped obtain that increased funding said last week that the state had better pay up or risk landing back in court.

Most Kansans, including most state legislators, surely want to see the schools get that money, but with a $140 million budget shortfall this year and the potential for a $1 billion deficit next fiscal year, it may not be that easy. Tax increases to raise state revenue won’t be popular, so lawmakers will have to look at budget cuts.

Under any circumstances, the cutting won’t be easy, but it gets a lot harder if public school funding, which amounts to about half the state’s budget, is taken entirely off the table. If revenues are down or static and no reductions are made in school funding, cuts in other state spending, such as social services and higher education, will have to be much deeper.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has taken the sensible action of recommending no cuts to school budgets this year. Contracts for personnel, transportation and other costs already have been set, and it would be too great a hardship. However, the governor also has said her budget proposal for next year will include “adjustments” in school funding.

Proponents of additional school funding worked hard to obtain the 2006 improvements, and it’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to see that funding eroded. On the other hand, tough times call for tough decisions, and tying legislators’ hands on the school finance package may cause even less palatable cuts in other areas of the state budget.

It’s not going to be a pretty year. We can only hope that the spending decisions made by legislators in 2009 won’t multiply the state’s legal costs to defend those decisions to the state’s schools and every other state-funded entity that believes it didn’t get its fair share.