A Year of Drama and Hard Feelings in Education

Josh Goodman

"Today marks the beginning of a very dark week at The School District of Philadelphia," began a press release issued last Monday by the District itself. No doubt many Philadelphia school employees would agree. That day, the District issued layoff notices to 3,024 of its workers, including 1,523 of the District's approximately 11,000 teachers.

Budget problems are nothing new for Philadelphia's School District, which was taken over by the state of Pennsylvania a decade ago in part because of its chronic funding problems. Through all those difficulties, though, it has no modern history of teacher layoffs on this scale.

The moves were designed to close a $629 million shortfall in the School District's $2.7 billion budget--a gap caused by the end of federal stimulus funding and the knowledge that cuts in state funding were on the way.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 12, 2011 1:28 AM
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