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| The district has never recovered from Paul Vallas' financial mismanagement. |
Yes, schools will open on time in Philly. But only by going further into debt to the banks. According to the NYT, ("A City Borrows So That Its Schools Open On Time") the situation is not as dire yet as Detroit’s. But the problem is so severe that the city agreed at the last minute on Thursday to borrow $50 million just to be able to open schools on time. Even with that money, schools will open Sept. 9 with a minimum of staffing and sharply curtailed extracurricular activities and other programs.
“The concept is just jaw-dropping,” said Helen Gym, who has three children in the city’s public schools. “Nobody is talking about what it takes to get a child educated. It’s just about what the lowest number is needed to get the bare minimum. That’s what we’re talking about here: the deliberate starvation of one of the nation’s biggest school districts.”The district has been victimized by state takeover, which put the schools under the control of a corporate School Reform Commission. It was the SRC that brought in Paul Vallas as CEO and Vallas left the school district in 2007 in a state of financial chaos from which it has never recovered.
Look for Supt. Hite to try and take advantage of the crisis by forcing more concessions from teachers and the unions.
Nutter's plan is more money for the banks. $15 million in interest payments over four years. Debt service is already 12% of the School District budget.
ReplyDeleteIn the SRC's "FY 2014 Proposed Budget in Brief" it says:
" In FY09, these catagores (debt service, charter school payments, and out-of-district expenses) constituted approximately 29% of the overall District operating budget, in Fy14 they are projected to be approximately 48% of the District's operating budget. As a result, a smaller share of the District's operating budget can be spent on District operating schools."
For documentation see page 3 here: http://tinyurl.com/lpgtfak