This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.
The applicant was an “amazing young teacher,” said principal Chris Lehmann, blinking into the TV camera lights, but he spurned the job offer from Science Leadership Academy.
“He’s taking a job outside Philadelphia,” Lehmann said, “because we can’t guarantee that the funds will be there.”
Many in the crowd of school advocates at the May 15 City Hall press conference shook their heads angrily or groaned.
Lehmann’s disappointment was just one more endured by the Philadelphia School District and its supporters as they beg City Council – and the state – for enough funds to keep schools operating on a bare-bones budget.
Earlier in the day, bands of parents and advocates organized by Education Voters Pennsylvania and other groups had fanned out through the building, buttonholing Council members or their staffs. They urged funding to prevent the massive cutbacks and layoffs that school officials say will result if the $216 million needed just to preserve current services isn’t forthcoming.
These advocates sat silently at the Thursday Council session, holding up signs calling for full funding as Council President Darrell Clarke introduced a bill to provide $120 million of the money through the continuation of a 1 percent city sales tax surcharge that was slated to expire.
The silence ended with the gavel of adjournment.
A coalition of education groups said Clarke’s bill was putting the District’s budget for next year at “grave risk” because it would require approval by the state General Assembly. The criticism was echoed by Mayor Nutter and by school officials, including School Reform Commission Chair Bill Green and Superintendent William Hite.
“We appreciate the fact that they [Council] have started to move,” said Education Voters executive director Susan Gobreski. “But we need stable, reliable funding.”
Clarke’s long-anticipated bill was the start of what shapes up as several tense weeks of maneuvering between City Hall, Harrisburg, the District, and public school supporters, with the SRC and District Chief Financial Officer Matthew Stanski hoping for the best but quietly preparing for the worst.
A bill passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly last June authorizes Council to extend the sales tax, but requires that $120 million of the proceeds go to the schools annually. Council must act before the city’s fiscal year ends June 30.
Clarke’s bill gives the schools the anticipated $120 million only in the first year. After that, a growing share of the sales tax revenues is used to shore up the city’s municipal workers’ ailing pension fund until there is a 50-50 split with the District starting in fiscal 2018.
This proposed split would have to be approved by the General Assembly. The city’s track record on education votes in Harrisburg has been less than convincing in recent years, but Clarke said he was hopeful.
“I think the important thing to remember is that we’re not even to June 1st,” said Ben Waxman, press secretary for Sen. Vincent Hughes, minority chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “The state budget process has not really begun in earnest, and things are very much fluid at this point.”
In a joint statement with Clarke, Hughes called for a renewed push for the General Assembly to approve a $2-per-pack local cigarette tax for schools already passed by Council but stalled by the Republican leadership in the General Assembly – and to support additional measures such as the reinstatement of the charter school expense reimbursement that the Corbett administration eliminated in 2011, costing the District more than $100 million.
“If I’m not going to be optimistic about measures we put forth, then what’s the point?” Clarke told reporters, defending his revised sales tax plan and the cigarette tax. “We need to maximize opportunities for schools, but we also have to maintain the fiscal health of the city.”
Supporters of city schools in Harrisburg say, however, that getting additional help there may be even more difficult if Council insists on changing the state’s original sales tax proposal.
“Whenever we go to Harrisburg, we’re instantly asked about the sales tax extension,” said Lori Shorr, Mayor Nutter’s chief education officer.
Cigarette tax ideas
The cigarette tax is seen as an intriguing possibility, partly because the commonwealth is facing a budget shortfall of its own, and the General Assembly might see a statewide cigarette tax as the most politically palatable option.
A state tax increase would almost surely be less than $2 a pack, and Donna Cooper, executive director of the Public Citizens for Children and Youth sees an opening for Philadelphia to piggyback on it. If the state tax increase was 50 cents a pack, it could be $2 in Philadelphia, with the District keeping $1.50.
A split cigarette tax is “an interesting opportunity,” said Joe Grace, director of public policy for the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.
Local revenue possibilities include increasing the District’s share of city property tax from 55 to 60 percent – Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sanchez has introduced a bill to do this – or reducing tax abatements to new projects, as proposed by Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr., giving the developers a break only on those taxes that would otherwise go to the city.
In the end, though, the sales tax extension will be needed. Cooper said that Clarke would be “putting the schools at risk … people will see through it” if the $120 million is lost. School advocates were urging Council members to vote for an extension without the pension fund dollars, regardless of Clarke’s wishes.
Cooper described the situation as “a game of chicken” but added that “I’m the eternal optimist.”
District Finance chief Stanski is also an optimist, but only up to a point. He and his staff are drawing up a budget that assumes the $120 million and nothing beyond that. The consequences of that would include about 1,000 layoffs, class sizes of 41 in high schools, and a 16 percent reduction in school police.
These cuts will almost surely be in the budget adopted by the SRC at the end of May. Stanski said he did not expect the District’s financial picture to be clear until deep into June. This is when layoff notices went out last year. The city and state must adopt their budgets by June 30.
Stanski dismissed some radical alternatives to the cuts proposed by school advocates – such as refusing to open the schools or opening them fully staffed and closing them when the money runs out. One principal, Karen Thomas of Cook-Wissahickon Elementary in Roxborough, recommended the latter strategy in an April 30 SRC budget hearing, saying that this year’s cutbacks of support staff “left me to manage the entire school virtually alone.”
Stanski was sympathetic but unconvinced. “We have an obligation to educate children,” he said, “we have an obligation to employees, and we have an obligation to pay vendors. There are state laws requiring 180 days. “
Hite has said if the District doesn’t come up with $96 million on top of the expected $120 million, the resulting cuts would reduce schools to “empty shells.”
Nobody’s discussing what schools look like without the $120 million.
“We realize that’s a risk,” Stanski said. “But there are no concrete plans for that now.”
Waiting for results
The delegation from Education Voters was already in his office when Councilman William Greenlee arrived. They were making their case to staffer Julia O’Connell but were glad to do a repeat when the boss walked in.
Greenlee listened carefully, citing the need to solve pension problems as well as school funding problems.
He then added that “City Council has stepped up every time. And we will again. Wait till you see what the results are.”
Susan Nordlof, who has children at Masterman and Wissahickon Charter, was unconvinced.
“Our timeline is our children,” she said. “They only grow up once.”
Paul Jablow is a regular freelance contributor to the Notebook.
This Notebook’s forthcoming print edition, where this article appears, is due out this week.