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PA Budget Secretary Deals School Superintendents A Reality Check

  School superintendents holding out hope for an end to the state budget impasse may have to accept closing their doors, state Budget Secretary Randy Albright said Friday.

Albright's forbidding instructions outline nearly a dozen steps for school districts managing their own demise.

"We don’t expect anything until maybe later in the month of March or early in the month of April," he said. "We don’t know when that will occur. It’s something that we continue to simply monitor."

State advocacy groups for school boards and school business officers say it’s more likely schools would keep borrowing money rather than shut down altogether.

They've argued that turning off the lights and sending kids home would be an extreme measure without an extreme financial upside. Shuttered schools would still have to pay their debts, as well as salaries and benefits covered by union contracts.