Countdown, Day 3: Class-size challenges and split grades loom | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Countdown, Day 3: Class-size challenges and split grades loom | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

Countdown, Day 3: Class-size challenges and split grades loom

by Paul Socolar on Sep 06 2013 Posted in Countdown to calamity?COMMENTS (3)PRINT

The School District's staff has shrunk by 3,000 since June, with 17,144 employees (full-time equivalents) now on the payroll. That's a 15 percent staffing cut. How many of those eliminated positions were teachers is information the District has not yet released.

But when schools open the doors to students on Monday, classrooms will be feeling the pinch from reduced staff in a few different ways.

The District anticipates starting the year with about 100 split-grade classrooms, according to Chief Financial Officer Matthew Stanski. Rarely seen in Philadelphia schools since a push by parents to stop the practice in 2007, "splits" are a way of saving a teaching position.

"We did have more than 100, but we're using [federal] Title II funding to address especially the [grade] 3-4 splits," Stanski said.

To eliminate all the split-grade classrooms would cost the District $11 million.

And that's money Stanski said the District simply doesn't have. 

He confirmed that the District has succeeded in eliminating what was once a $304 million budget gap -- primarily through $254 million in budget cuts.

But in this year's budget there is no slack at all, and he anticipates that the District will end the new fiscal year next June 30 with a fund balance of zero dollars.

"That makes it much more difficult to deal with emergency situations," he explained. The District had hoped to maintain a reserve through the fiscal year but has fallen far short of its revenue and savings projections.

Reports from schools make clear that the District has been stingy in its teacher