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Notebook editor Paul Socolar can be reached at 215-951-0330 x2107 or pauls@thenotebook.org.
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Tight times … and classrooms feel effects
by Paul Socolar
Just three years ago, the Philadelphia School District had 12,179 teachers. By this fall, that number will have dropped to about 10,000.
The loss of 2,000 teachers over four years makes it clear that the School District’s financial situation involves more than a little belt-tightening.
Cuts to teaching positions at budget time a year ago were the harbinger of what has proved to be a massive, systemwide financial crunch. And the more information School District officials reveal about the District’s still-unfolding budget crisis, the grimmer the picture gets.
Last fall came the first revelation of a $73 million deficit. The School Reform Commission responded with an array of cuts including 175 layoffs in the central office, cutbacks in District contracts, and tighter financial controls. Schools across the city reported cuts in teaching positions and discretionary funds and sharp increases in overcrowded and split-grade classrooms.
Spring 2007 brought the release of the School District’s five-year plan, which presented the reality of a still-widening chasm between expenditures and income. The plan shows an immediate deficit of $182 million for 2007-08 and a cumulative deficit totaling a billion dollars over five years unless cuts are made and new funds are found.
The plan prepared by District staff, under departing CEO Paul Vallas, proposes closing this billion-dollar gap through a mix of new revenues and cuts. In the coming year, the District proposes chopping another $99 million in expenses. In addition, the plan relies on the District’s coaxing $82 million more in revenue out of state and city sources, and continuing to cut back on expenditures in future years.
The plan depends heavily on school closings to keep the budget balanced over five years. At least 22 schools would be closed: seven in 2008, 11 in 2009, and four in 2010.
SRC Chair James Nevels said that staff, financial consultants, and Michael Masch, the state budget secretary, had put extensive work into developing and reviewing the plan.
“We have an understanding of the magnitude; we have an understanding of some areas of the budget where we can make some cuts; and all that will comport with the five-year plan,” Nevels said. “What I’m concerned about is that we move as quickly and decisively as we can and implement the recommendations.”
Parents and school activists have protested the budget cuts, questioning whether they will actually deliver the necessary savings. Michael Churchill, chief counsel of the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, a veteran of many school funding fights, said he doubts the financial plan provides the resources needed to sustain the District’s reform momentum.
“This plan will not support increased student achievement,” he said, noting the lack of initiatives to improve teaching and learning. “Furthermore, it is based significantly on fantasy.”
If any of the two dozen items comprising the District’s gap-closing plan this year do not pan out, the SRC has indicated that they may have to turn to another set of contingency measures including program and school-based cuts they have previously rejected.
Despite regular statements by the CEO and the SRC promising to protect kids and classrooms from direct cutbacks, teaching positions have continued to be a casualty (see Cutbacks: the word from the schools) . Parent activists have called for a “firewall” protecting classrooms if budget cuts continue.
“As parents who are out there advocating for more funding, we are hoping to have some influence over how the money is spent,” said Aissia Richardson, the Home and School president at Powel Elementary who is working on funding issues through the citywide group Parents United for Public Education. “We want to see the money going to schools and classrooms – not to administration,” she added.
Richardson said her small school has had to deal with cumulative budget reductions totaling over $400,000.
Even before the budget crisis, most schools were already dealing with steadily dwindling budgets and staffs due to the downward trend in student enrollments citywide. There has been a 20 percent decrease in student population in the last decade, mostly accounted for by the movement of students to charter schools.
Now schools are facing a double whammy, as the District must cut deeper to dig out from its deficit situation.
One hundred of over 250 teaching positions expected to be lost this year are the result of a second consecutive year of District backsliding on class size, with the other positions lost due to enrollment decreases.
The District’s budget plan anticipates saving $9 million by sticking to the mandated maximum class size in making teacher allotments and thereby hiring fewer new teachers at the beginning of the year. Maximum class sizes in Philadelphia are regulated by the contractual limits in the teachers’ union contract. These limits are 30 students per classroom in grades K-3 and 33 per class in grades 4 and up.
Schools may also lose teaching positions as a result of a squeeze on discretionary funds at the school level. Vallas noted that on average, there was no increase in discretionary funds to schools in their new budgets. Some schools use that money to pay for additional teaching positions, and the cost charged to a school to add a teaching position is climbing by 15 percent this fall.
Last year, class sizes took a hit when the District redirected a federal grant formerly used to support class size reduction – to the tune of $17 million in 2005-06. Some schools had used the money to hire teachers and create smaller classes in grades K-3, while others had hired classroom assistants at schools where space or other factors preventing hiring of additional teachers.
District budget officials say that because of the different staffing configurations, it is difficult to estimate how many students in grades K-3 were helped by the class-size reduction initiative, but the number of classrooms was in the hundreds. The hiring of a single new teacher in the first grade, for instance, allows for smaller numbers of students in all first- grade classrooms at a school.
Even before the redirection of the class size reduction grant last year, the ratio of students to teachers across the District had started to creep up again, after several years where the staffing ratio had been improving.
A Notebook comparison of enrollment and staffing levels determined that since 2004, the districtwide student-teacher ratio has climbed by 5 percent, leaving the ratio worse than where it was when Vallas and the SRC took charge in 2002.
District financial officials said they could not provide comprehensive data on actual class sizes.
However, a representative of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers reported that as of April 2007, 198 classes are over the contractual class size limits. The union has filed grievances in 125 of those cases.
The District reports 42 split-grade classes this spring, while union claims there are 74 such classes as of April 2007. The District officially allows split grades in grades 1-4 but no more than two splits per school.
Some split classes resulted from a process known as “leveling down,” which was conducted last October for the first time in several years as an economy measure. Leveling involves reassigning teachers based on actual fall enrollments and can result in roster changes and the loss of a teacher when enrollments fall significantly below expectations. Citywide, the District removed 62 teachers last fall for a savings of $5 million.
Some of the other cuts planned for the fall as part of the District’s proposed budget include the following:
- $14.1 million in central office and regional office staff reductions, including the closing of the Southwest, CEO, and EMO regions and a 15 percent overall cut in administrative staff.
- A $12 million reduction in funding to schools run by outside “education management organizations.”
- $10.6 million in unspecified reductions in contracted services.
- $2 million from limiting TerraNova testing to 9th and 10th grades.
- $1.9 million in costs currently picked up by the District for schools that operate the JROTC program.