HARRISBURG – The scheduled Aug. 27 payment of more than $876 million to Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts will not occur due to the lack of a state budget, Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak announced Wednesday.

“This marks the second month we have been legally prohibited from providing districts with state funding, and districts have now missed payments totaling about $1.3 billion for this school year,” Zahorchak said.

Subsidy payments totaling more than $416 million were scheduled to go out on July 30 in what would have been the first payment of the 2009-10 fiscal year. The Sept. 24 subsidy payment also could be impacted by the budget impasse, according to Zahorchak, because it takes about two weeks to authorize payments after a budget is enacted.