We recognize there are important differences in principle and philosophy for how our state government should improve public education.

But we hope lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum can agree that the legislature’s slow pace in resolving how education will be funded is shameful.

“Our political leaders have been holding the hopes, dreams and future of scores of Pennsylvania’s children hostage because of a lack of political will,” Rev. Dr. Gregory Edwards of Power Interfaith told The Center Square’s Christina Lengyel for an article in Monday’s Sun-Gazette.

He’s right.

As the Sun-Gazette has editorialized several times over the past few months, the stark realities of a court decision requiring the state to change how it funds education is bearing down — and the state’s taxpayers, parents and children deserve answers for how the state will move forward.

The delays, the tepid pace of the conversation, the frequency with which officials within our state government seem more focused on frankly less urgent concerns are, again, shameful.

We hope that they will take this conversation and the need to reach a decision on how to proceed with school funding with a more clear sense of the urgency and gravity of the issue.