When it comes to educating kids, state is tragically irresponsible

YOU ARE a small-business owner who depends heavily on an influx of orders and money from a large customer.

The customer used to be reliable, but no more. A few years ago, he suddenly cut back on his orders, leaving you with smaller profits. Then, he decided to delay payments and you had to get loans to tide you over.

Lately, he's become more erratic. He won't let you know how much he intends to order or when. In exchange for a year's worth of your product, he only makes partial payments - and won't return your calls when you try to find out when the rest of the money will arrive.

What do you do? As a business owner, you begin to pull your hair out - or you might even have to close your business. You can't take out more loans and you are in the red.

In a nutshell, that is the situation facing Pennsylvania's 500 public school districts. Their big customer is the state, which lays out more than $10 billion in aid to schools each year.

A free public education is mandated by the state Constitution, and the state is supposed to help pay for it. But it has become erratic.

After years of stable or rising subsidies, Gov. Tom Corbett cut $1.1 billion from pre-K-to-12 education funding in 2011. Districts had to scramble to make up the difference, through local tax increases and budget cuts.

In Philadelphia, the cuts hit particularly hard. Incoming Superintendent William Hite faced a $500 million deficit and was forced to slash and burn school programs and personnel. City subsidies to the district increased by 28 percent - most of it funded by tax increases.

To make matters worse, the politics of paralysis has taken hold in Harrisburg. Gov. Wolf has proposed large increases in state aid for education; the Republican-controlled legislature has refused to raise the taxes needed.

Because of the failure to pass a state budget last year, districts had to cut again, borrow more, and hope for a resolution to the issue at the state level. No resolution is in sight.

Wolf did sign a bill early this year allowing for payments to districts, but they amount to only about half of what is needed. In Philadelphia, for instance, the district was due to get $1.4 billion in state aid. It has gotten $700 million. The story is the same in hundreds of other districts.

Philadelphia already has borrowed $525 million to tide it over, but that money has been spent.

The political stalemate in Harrisburg very well could last longer than the districts' cash supply. They don't know how much they will get from the state or when they will get it.

A number of districts - Philadelphia included - are not sure they can keep the schools open until June. In a recent survey by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, 67 percent of the districts responding said they might have to shut down because they will be out of cash.

If you are a business owner, whose product is office supplies, it's a personal hardship if you must close.

If you are a school district, whose product is educated children, it's more than a hardship if you must close. It is a tragedy.

And we are coming closer to that tragedy every day.