Yellow buses to roll with extra $53.4 million for city's schools

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman spent 90 minutes yesterday with city officials, hammering out details on how to carve up the extra $53.4 million that City Council is set to approve for the district.

Ackerman and the officials - including four City Council members and representatives from Mayor Nutter's office - agreed to restore yellow-bus service for elementary-school students and funding for reduced class sizes, accelerated schools and early education.

"It set a new level of partnership between all of us," said Lori Shorr, the chief of Nutter's Office on Education.

After the meeting, which also included Robert Archie, chairman of the School Reform Commission, district chief financial officer Michael Masch and staffers for six other Council members, the district agreed to:

* Spend $26.5 million for yellow-bus transportation.

* Spend $16 million to maintain reduced class sizes of 20 to 24 pupils in K-3 classrooms.

* Restore $8.2 million to the accelerated-schools program for students at risk of dropping out. The schools will be maintained at the same level as this year.

* Spend $2.7 million to restore 270 early-education slots in the Bright Futures program.

Council members and Ackerman said that they were confident the reshuffling of priorities could save between 600 to 800 district jobs. But Shorr said that the "friendly agreement" still depends on getting at least $57 million in additional funding from the state and $75 million in savings from labor unions.

"There's still a lot of risk involved," Shorr said. "We're hopeful we'll see an increase in the governor's budget."

The district made an additional $11 million in cuts in its budget yesterday, equaling an amount it had originally asked Council to pay in addition to the $53.4 million.

The district slashed $4.5 million from a special-education supplemental-services program and $5 million from Ackerman's "Summer SLAM" summer-school program. Masch said that the cuts in special education "were not cuts in direct classroom" services, and that the SLAM program was reduced from from 40,000 to 30,000 students.

In an interview, Ackerman conceded that the summer program has been criticized as an extra when basics were being slashed.

"What we were able to do was to listen to the Council and address all of their priorities," Ackerman said. "They did say Summer SLAM was a place we could go to recapture some funds, which we did."

While Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan said last night that restoring jobs "is a move in the right direction," he added that "more needs to be done."

He said that he is looking forward to Friday, when the union goes before Common Pleas Judge Idee Fox for an injunction against the planned layoff of 1,672 teachers and nearly 900 support staff.

Jordan said that the layoffs have been handled unfairly since most teachers at the Promise Academies, another one of Ackerman's "Imagine 2014" initiatives, were not subjected to the layoffs.

Council is expected to take a final vote on a tax increase to raise some of the funds for the additional $53.4 million tomorrow.

Staff writer Catherine Lucey contributed to this report.