We saw some examples last week of why school-funding reform is so difficult to accomplish in Illinois.

House Republican Leader Jim Durkin appeared with Governor Bruce Rauner at Lyons Township High School, which is in Durkin’s district. Durkin pointed out to reporters that the school would lose $1.9 million in state funding under the controversial school-funding-reform bill of Senator Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill).

Leader Durkin also claimed that every school district in his House district would lose funding with Manar’s proposal. Chicago, he noted, would gain hundreds of millions of dollars. Durkin declared that he and his members could not and would not support a plan that shoveled big-time bucks at Chicago while cutting their own districts.

But that’s really the whole point of Manar’s plan. He wants to shift state funding from wealthier suburban districts such as those Durkin represents (14.2 percent of Lyons Township High School students are from low-income households) to districts that have high numbers of impoverished students (86 percent of Chicago Public Schools students are from low-income households). Manar wants a “hold harmless” provision to make sure no district loses money right away, but that’ll cost quite a bit of cash – which the state doesn’t currently have.

Durkin represents half of Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno’s district, so convincing both of those chamber leaders to sign off on a plan that takes state money away from their own schools is just as difficult as convincing the two Chicago Democrats who head up the House and Senate to agree to Rauner’s K-12 funding proposal that would reduce Chicago’s annual appropriation by $74 million.

Like I said, this ain’t easy.

Theresa Mah (D-Chicago) was never given much of a chance at winning the 2nd House District Democratic primary race on March 15 against a well-known political name who had a huge demographic advantage.

Mah was vying to be the first Asian-American legislator in state history. But the 2nd District was purposely drawn to include Chinatown to give Asian Americans only some “influence” in the district. In previous years, Chinatown and Asian-American neighborhoods were sliced up between several legislative districts, but the Democrats made a conscious decision to avoid a federal lawsuit against their map by creating an “influencer” district.

The census numbers show the 2nd has an Asian-American voting-age population of 23.5 percent, vastly smaller than the 53-percent Latino population. And the organization of Representative Eddie Acevedo (D-Chicago) had put another Asian American on the ballot to further muddy things on behalf of Acevedo’s son Alex, who was vying to replace him. But that put-up candidate was kicked off the ballot on February 1, and things went rapidly downhill from there.

“The governor has linked things together,” Senate President John Cullerton said at a speech to the City Club of Chicago back in January. “We don’t have a budget because he’s got his Turnaround Agenda. So I can link things together, too.”

Cullerton was referring to his threat to not pass any funding for K-12 education until school-funding reform is addressed. Despite being repeatedly blasted by the governor and the Senate Republican leader for planning to hold schools “hostage” to “bail out” Chicago’s school system with his funding-reform plan, Cullerton has not publicly backed down from his statement.

And I happen to believe that Cullerton’s direct and deliberate threat, perhaps more than anything else, has pushed Statehouse types to try to reach a conclusion to this long, crazy impasse.

It’s almost impossible to make a deal with somebody who won’t accept reality. And that’s been the case in Illinois for more than a year, as Governor Bruce Rauner has made one politically unrealistic demand after another while refusing to negotiate a budget until those demands are met, all the while blaming the entire impasse on the intransigence of House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Because the public debate is so wrapped up in partisanship and ideology, it’s been tough for a large segment of the population to wrap its collective mind around what’s really been going on. Many see this fight as the “new, good” Rauner versus the “old, bad” Madigan. While that argument certainly has plenty of merit, it’s not nearly the entire story.

It takes two to tango, and the truth is and has always been that Rauner doesn’t even have enthusiastic support among legislative Republicans for a big chunk of his Turnaround Agenda, particularly those demands opposed by labor unions. His complete agenda cannot pass both legislative chambers no matter who the House speaker is.

After what happened the day after the March primary election, however, Rauner’s obvious inability to accept some stark political realities might finally help more folks understand what the rest of us have been seeing for the past year or more.