Each school in the district receives a budget to pay for teachers, programs and other resources. There are long-standing inequities among schools in part because inexperienced teachers, who earn less, tend to work at the most troubled schools.

Parents whose children attend higher-performing schools with less needy students are concerned that their children's education may suffer if money is taken away. In a district constantly trying to offset a deficit, money is tight at all schools.

"I doubt anyone questions that lower-performing schools need more resources - I certainly agree that they do," said Kevin Peter, whose son attends C.W. Henry School in West Mount Airy. "However, in our district's top-performing schools, like Henry, we're just barely hanging on with our current funding."

There's no librarian, the school struggles to keep classes small, and three staff positions were lost in the last year, said Peter, who shared his concerns in an e-mail last week.

At its meeting yesterday, the School Reform Commission also heard from parent advocate Helen Gym, who has a child at Masterman, one of the district's top magnet schools.

Chairwoman Sandra Dungee Glenn said that she understood the concerns, and that the commission would look carefully at how to deal with long-standing funding inequities.

"That is going to be a balancing act we have to go through," Dungee Glenn said.

The commission in December hired Education Resource Strategies, of Wayland, Mass., to recommend ways to make the district's budgeting more fair. The work, which will cost $350,000, is likely to take a year.

Arlene Ackerman, who was announced last week as the district's new chief executive officer, has created funding systems that shifted dollars to needier schools in Seattle, Washington and San Francisco. Ackerman will help Philadelphia in the effort, Dungee Glenn said.

Dungee Glenn for months has expressed concern about giving more money to schools with students who may need more services - poor students, English-language learners, and special-education students.

Because part of the inequity stems from inexperienced, lowest-paid teachers working at the neediest schools, the contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is involved.

Dungee Glenn said she wasn't sure if that could be changed.

"Whether we can adjust for that or how much we can adjust for that is an outstanding question," she said.

Dungee Glenn said the district wanted to shift dollars without penalizing higher-performing schools.

"It would be wrong to say the only way to approach it is to take money away from x to give to y," she said.

The district may need to move money out of central administration or use additional state funding that Gov. Rendell wants to send the district over the next few years, she said.