Such are the outrageous options that a startling number of Pennsylvania school superintendents are actively considering, three-plus months into the state budget standstill that’s left 500 of them struggling to make it through the first half of the school year with page after page of their budgets missing in action.

Legislators’ inaction since the deal was due June 30 has, so far, resulted in the withholding of some $2 billion in state-aid payments to districts. By the end of this month, that number is expected to soar to $3 billion. Even in the Keystone state, where budgets are routinely delayed by weeks or months, this is uncharted territory, school officials say, and goes far beyond the usual faceoff between states and their school districts over funding allocations.

Exacerbating the Harrisburg hangup: Many Pennsylvania districts, still recovering from the recession and a massive 2011 state-aid cut, were already financially vulnerable.

“They were going into this delayed budget with less financial resources behind them than they would have the last time around,” said Steve Robinson, a Pennsylvania School Boards Association spokesman. Another strain: district contributions to employee retirement accounts have jumped to around 20 percent, he said.

Throughout the state, Pennsylvania school districts had already borrowed more than $346 million—led by Philadelphia, which borrowed $275 million—to make payroll and fund basic services as of September 29, the state Auditor General reported. Withholding payments from school-district vendors has now become a common occurrence, and nearly two dozen districts have already suspended tuition payments to charter schools.

Back in Erie, Superintendent Badams says that borrowing $30 million to keep Erie schools temporarily afloat for another two months, would be a less catastrophic alternative to closing the schools this fall. But that would push the district, already $9 million late in payments to vendors, further into the red.

Erie is worse off, financially, than almost every other district in the state—its tax base is eroding, 70 percent of its budget comes from the state and 80 percent of its students come from low-income families—but it is hardly alone in feeling Pennsylvania schools’ Dickensian-like pain.

Carbondale Area School District, which serves 1,650 students in northeast Pennsylvania, has dipped into a $900,000 tax-anticipation note to cover short-term costs—think buying groceries on your credit card. Officials are considering closing schools one day a week as the cold weather means lights and heat are on for more hours.

“These are the realities that we’re faced with because no money is coming in, bills are behind … and expenses are going to increase now that the winter months are setting in,” Superintendent Joseph Gorham said. “By the end of October, if there’s no movement, we’re in trouble.”