Mayor John Street and Gov. Mark Schweiker agreed Friday to postpone a state takeover of the city's schools for another three weeks, pledging to use that time to bridge the significant differences remaining between Philadelphia and Harrisburg.
The announcement came only hours shy of the midnight deadline set by the state.
"This is a monumental decision in the history of this city, " Street said. "We believe that we should make every effort to resolve the ambiguities and differences that we have."
"We will only do this once, so we want to make sure that we get it right," Street added.
Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge and Street agreed in August that the state would be allowed to take over the schools if the 215,000-student district's problems of declining test scores and a looming budget deficit were not solved. For full coverage check tomorrow's Daily Pennsylvanian or log onto dailypennsylvanian.com.
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