Updated at 2:20 p.m.

Several thousand blue collar union members marched through Center City today, snarling traffic in a midday protest against planned cuts and layoffs by the Philadelphia School District.

After marching from the Municipal Services Building across from City Hall to the School District  headquarters on North Broad Street, scores of the protesters retraced their steps and sat down at Broad and Race Streets.

Fourteen people, including union officials, were arrested for blocking traffic.

"Anyone who stays will be arrested," a police official warned, and a cheer went up as the 14 refused to budge.

"Save our schools!" the crowd shouted.  "Save our schools!"

Among those taken into custody was George Ricchezza, head of the union 32BJ SEIU.

During the march, the union members followed a Teamsters Union tractor trailer as it blew its air horn.

A sea of purple shirts reflected membership in SEIU, 32BJ, the union that represents district bus drivers, cleaners, building engineers and other blue-collar workers.

District officials have sent layoff notices to every member - over 2,000 workers - of 32BJ.  The district, teetering on the brink of financial insolvency, says it does not want to lay off the workers but must negotiate $50 million in savings.  Union officials fear the jobs will be privatized. The workers' contract requires a full year's notice before layoffs; pink slips started to go out last September.

The rally is part of a statewide protest of the "dismantling of public education by Gov. Corbett and the School Reform Commission," union officials said.

Shannon Lane, a bus aide for 16 years, faces being laid off at the end of the year. "We're defending public schools," she said. "We think it's unconscionable that wealthy corporations aren't being taxed fairly, and public schools are being cut.

"This is privatization. Children will lose."

Maintenance worker Steve Seibert, a 12-year disctrict veteran. is worried about his paycheck and benefits. His 10-year-old son is paralyzed and needs constant care. "I need medical coverage," Seibert said. "I don't want to go on the system. I've got pride in myself. I want to work."

City Councilman Bobby Henon said he stood with the workers. "There are all-out attempts to privatize municipal governments and school districts," he said. "What's next? Privatizing our children?"

Henon was one of several councilpeople who joined the marchers.  The others were Councilman Wilson Goode, Councilman Dennis O'Brien, Councilman Mark Squilla and Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell.  Teachers' union president Jerry Jordan was also on hand, and addressed the crowd.

"Don't think that you're out here by yourself," Jordan said.  "You're not.  You're not!"

Building engineer Ernie Bennett energized an already-frenzied crowd.

"We didn't create this deficit," Bennett shouted, motioning to district headquarters at 440 N. Broad St.  "We should not be held accountable for the mismanagement of these people in here."

At Bennett's urging, the crowd faced headquarters.

"Shame on you," they shouted.  "Shame on you!"

The district is in the middle of massive upheaval, with a planned overhaul of the way schools are organized and run under discussion.  District officials have said they want to dramatically shrink central operations and place schools in "achievement networks" run either by district staff who have contracts with the SRC or outside entities such as universities or charter organizations. That plan has drawn criticism, especially from district employees.

Union leaders say they do not intend to disrupt students' rides home from school, but the district has warned that delays are possible.

Tonight's SRC meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30. It's a fairly light agenda, all things considered, though 35 speakers have signed up to address the commission on topics ranging from the proposed district reorganization plan to school nurse layoffs.  Follow along with me as I livetweet the meeting.

For some background on where the district is right now, here's my story from today's paper detailing some back-and-forth between district officials and City Council members.

City Council has more questions for the Philadelphia School District. Kristen Graham tweets as it happens, beginning at 1 p.m.

Follow along here! If you're on a mobile device, click here to follow along.

Kristen Graham live tweets today's City Council hearing on the Philadelphia School District's proposed budget, which includes a $94 million funding increase request. It's likely to be a point of contention since it depends on council approving a controversial actual value initiative that would mean higher city property taxes. On a mobile device? Click here to follow the coverage. In a recent story, school officials said that without the extra money, schools may not open in the fall.  Daily News Opinion writers are asking these questions.

The Philadelphia School District is set to have its first public hearing on the 2012-13 budget tonight, and I'll be livetweeting.

A few bullet points:

-The overall spending plan is $2.5 billion.  It contains a $218 million budget gap that will have to be made up through borrowing.  The district already spends 10 cents of every dollar on debt service.

-That $218 million gap is an optimistic figure that assumes the mayor's Actual Value Initiative will pass City Council, giving the district $94 million.  AVI doesn't have enough votes to pass at the moment, and there's some movement in Council to delay it by a year.  The $218 number also assumes that a court decision that would essentially allow charter schools to expand without district approval will be altered. 

-The budget banks on $156 million in givebacks from district unions.  (Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, has already balked.)

More to come!  You can follow along with the live Tweets here. The meeting is also live streamed on the district's website.

School Reform Commission Chairman Pedro Ramos was blunt in a Tuesday news conference (which I live Tweeted here) announcing that the Philadelphia School District's current structure will essentially be blown up.

"What we know through a lot of history and evidence and practice is that the current system doesn't work," Ramos said.

The future, Ramos and Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen said, will include decentralization, performance-based "achievement networks" of schools that operate on contracts, and, beginning in 2013, 40 fewer school buildings for the district to run. After closing those schools, the district plans on shutting six more schools per year through 2017.  (It does not plan on teacher layoffs, Knudsen said, but it's not clear how it's possible to close 40 buildings and not lay off any teachers.)

And the budget?  Ugly.  There's a $218 million deficit for 2013 - and that will be higher if Mayor Nutter's Actual Value Initiative doesn't pass City Council.  (And it doesn't currently have the votes to pass.) 

The SRC and administration said that unlike in years past, they will not rely on borrowing huge sums of money to pay for recurring costs and day-to-day expenses.  They won't be able to achiveve a balanced budget next year, but will get there by 2014, Knudsen said. "We’ve learned that truth in budgeting is ugly, but it’s better than not knowing what the real deal is," SRC Commissioner Feather Houstoun said.

Next school year will be a transition year, with a pilot "achievement network," development of a new curriculum, better training and recruitment of principals and teachers, new safety initiatives, expansion of high-performing schools, etc. etc.

It's change on a massive scale.  Stay tuned.

As I reported in today's paper, the Philadelphia School District is poised to undergo a massive restructuring - a complete change in the way schools are organized and run. 

Its leaders are planning to close 40 schools next year and an additional 24 more by 2017.

The district faces a $218 million shortfall for fiscal 2013, more than initially announced, and that number could rise.

Officials want to get $156 million in savings from restructured benefits and wages.  They want to shrink the central office even further.  They want to realize $149 million in savings from chater schools.

District leaders declined to confirm any of these details to The Inquirer, but released them to staff and to City Council in briefings yesterday.  However, they will hold a news conference scheduled for 10:30, and I'll live Tweet from that.  So, follow along here...

I keep a picture of Tamika McNeill at my desk.  It keeps me focused.

Tamika was 12 when classmates from Cleveland Elementary School in North Philadelphia grabbed her, forced their hands inside her shirt and tried to fondle her breasts. They threatened to attack her if she told the truth.  School officials didn’t report the incident for months. Tamika thought about killing herself.

I remember sitting in her living room, listening to Tamika struggle to articulate the terrible things that had been done to her, things that no child should have to endure, especially at school.  

Tamika’s story became part of Assault on Learning, the investigative series on Philadelphia school violence that recently earned The Inquirer the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for public service, the highest honor our profession offers. I spent more than a year reporting and writing that series along with colleagues Jeff Gammage, Dylan Purcell, Susan Snyder and John Sullivan, plus editors, photographers, graphic designers and multimedia specialists.  At times, it was a struggle, but on the tough days, I thought about Tamika.

My colleagues and I were proud that our series spurred change and perhaps even made things better for kids like Tamika; that was why we wrote it.  But winning the Pulitzer was an extraordinary moment for me, and for the whole newsroom, which has been through tremendous turmoil over the past few years.  The public service gold medal is a staff award, and it really was the effort of many people that made our Pulitzer possible.

Many people have asked me about that moment when we discovered we won, and here’s what I remember: gathering at Sue Snyder’s desk to check for news with the whole newsroom was gathered around us. Obsessively refreshing my Twitter feed, because I guessed that was where news would come first.  It did, and when I found out, I shouted, “Someone said we won!” (Way to verify a source there, Graham!) and the newsroom erupted.

There were speeches and the sound of champagne corks popping. I called my husband, who could hardly hear me over the happy shouts of my colleagues. I couldn’t stop hugging people; I felt incredibly lucky and proud and dazed.  My family rushed into the newsroom, my 7-year-old niece’s eyes wide at the sight of the celebration.

I thought of my late grandmother, Miriam Becker Metzger, who scrubbed floors and wrote for a newspaper to work her way through college at a time when women didn’t really attend college. I thought of the Philadelphia public school teachers and Temple University journalism professors who nurtured me as a writer. I flashed back to the time when my aunt asked me to autograph a copy of my first “real” published story, printed in the Northeast Breeze when I was a teenager. “I want to keep this for when you win the Pulitzer,” she told me.  I laughed, because who ever heard of a bookworm from Northeast Philadelphia winning the Pulitzer?

The celebration has continued.

Shane Victorino, my favorite Phillie, congratulated me on Twitter, and then he called me, thanks to a kind colleague who arranged it.  (And yes, I’m still making jokes about how I have to check everything with my BFF Shane.) I heard from people I love and people I’ve never met, calling and writing with congratulations.  It has been lovely.  It has been a dream.

But I’m still thinking about Tamika, and how our work is not done.

Hello! With so much up in the air for the Philadelphia School District, every School Reform Commission meeting is a big one.  Tonight's meeting, scheduled to begin at 5:30, is no different. 

The two biggest items on the agenda are Renaissance school approvals and charter closures. 

Renaissance schools: the SRC will vote on whether to give four struggling district-run schools to charter organizations.  The four - Creighton, Cleveland, H.R. Edmunds and Jones - will likely be matched with Universal, Mastery, String Theory and American Paradigm, respectively, if the SRC adopts recommendations made by its staff. 

But some people aren't happy about the decision to turn these schools into charters, continuing the district's strategy of handing over low-performing schools to outside organizations.  Some members of the Creighton, Edmunds and Cleveland communities have said the district failed to give them adequate resources to improve and is now giving up on them.  They also suggest their selection for the Renaissance program was politically motivated.

Thomas Darden, the district official in charge of the Renaissance program, said that was not the case, that politics played no part in the decision.

"That's just completely false," Darden said.  "Internally to the district, we went through an exhaustive analysis to name these schools Renaissance schools."

The SRC will also vote on recommendations to close three troubled charters - Arise Academy, Hope Charter and Truebright Charter. Supporters of each say they are turning around and should not be closed.

Expect a packed house and a long meeting - almost 50 people have signed up to speak.  Follow along with me here! If you're on a mobile device, click here to follow along.