In a room adorned with gilded ceilings and marble columns, the Philadelphia Board of Education approved a $1.7 billion budget for fiscal year 2002 last Thursday.
But the room's grandeur still could not alleviate concerns about the projected $216 million deficit that the district faces.
"The situation is extremely serious, but it is not hopeless," Board of Education President Pedro Ramos said shortly before voting on the budget.
Without intervention by the city and state, the school district risks insolvency by the end of June, and all the schools may be forced to close before the end of the next academic year.
This is the second consecutive year that the school district has faced a fiscal crisis, although expenditures began to outpace revenues as early as 1997, according to school board member Michael Masch.
A number of one-time fixes, such as the sale of assets and the refinancing of debt, provided temporary relief, but those opportunities have been exhausted.
"They were desperation ploys to hold off the wolf at the door," Masch, who is also Penn's vice president for budget and management analysis, said.
For its part, Ramos assured that it has not been "business as usual" at the school district during the last year, citing such cost-cutting measures as a CEO-based leadership structure, as well as a a new school organization that replaces the 22 academic clusters with eight area academic offices.
And last month, the school district said that they would would pare at least 372 mostly administrative jobs by the end of the summer.
"We need to skinny down the administrative arm and renourish our classrooms," school district interim CEO Philip Goldsmith said.
Twenty million dollars have been cut from this year's budget, in addition to $30 million slashed last year. In the next five years, nearly $270 million will be trimmed, but "that's the most we can do on the expenditure side," Masch said.
However, these cuts have not been enough because over the last six years, the school district has been saddled with the cost of educating 6,600 additional students. In addition, the district had to fund such new programs as full-day kindergarten and state-mandated charter schools.
To fill the funding gap, the school district is looking to the city and state for a combination of appropriations, new legislation and the authorization of a district plan to borrow money.
The state contributes nearly 60 percent of the school's district budget, and is proposing a $67 million increase for fiscal year 2002, which begins July 1. However, the school district maintains that it ranks only 262 out of the state's 501 school districts in terms of funding per student.
And Governor Tom Ridge, who last year gave a special allotment of $58 million, may be reluctant to give more.
"If you're talking about giving hundreds and hundreds of millions more for Philadelphia, to say that there is not a long line of people in Harrisburg waiting to vote for that is an understatement," said Tim Reeves, Ridge's spokesman.
Ramos said that it was essential that all parties stay "constructively engaged" in order to reach a solution, but Reeves felt that the agreements made at last year's budget impasse have fallen short.
Reeves said that City Council is only now considering allocating the promised $45 million payment to the school district, and that the state had been left out of the recent budgeting process.
"To have squandered the last 11 months is unfathomable," Reeves said, adding that items are not being added to the nearly complete state budget.
But city education secretary Debra Kahn said that the money from the city was not required before the end of the school year.
"It's being addressed when it's needed," Kahn said, adding that academic and extra-curricular activities may be cut if more funding is not received.
However, Jerry Jordan, vice president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, does not find such measures acceptable.
"To call the children of Philadelphia poor does not mean that they should have a substandard education," Jordan said.
