Dive Brief:
- After months of severe budget impasse in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia School District Superintendent William Hite has announced that some area schools will likely be unable to remain open in January due to a lack of funding.
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According to Hite, payroll for Philly schools is currently guaranteed until January 29, 2016, but not after that date.
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Due to “the length of Pennsylvania's [budget] stalemate and the frequency to be an anomaly,” NBC Philadelphia reports that Standard and Poor downgraded the city’s credit, meaning the school district can’t borrow any more money.
Dive Insight:
Over the past year, Philadelphia’s education budget has dwindled and has now remained frozen for months. Some teachers, at the Chester Upland School District, were even working without paychecks. Now, NBC Philadelphia reports, the state auditor general's office “has tallied about $900 million in borrowing by Pennsylvania school districts to get through the impasse, including $525 million by Philadelphia." One district, Erie, has reportedly amassed $27 million in unpaid bills. In some Pennsylvania classrooms, 50% of classes don’t have teachers due to shortages.
Money woes existed in the city before the impasse, however. In order to start classes on time during the 2013-14 school year, Philadelphia cut $32 million from its school budget and had to had to borrow $50 million dollars. At that time, Philadelphia's teachers had turned to crowdfunding to pay for supplies like notebooks, paper and pencils. By the end of that school year, the city faced a $1.2 billion budget shortfall.
As recently as July 2014, Philly had turned to the general public for ideas, asking parents, educators, principals, universities, and community organizations to help the fiscally strained district create turnaround ideas. Lawsuits have also been filed over the funding inadequacies.
The consequences of the 2014 shortfall are now playing out, and with no clear solution on the table, it’s not clear how much worse the situation will get before some kind of compromise is reached.