School District could end budget year with a surplus
The cash-strapped School District of Philadelphia is not as strapped as in recent years - due in part to unfilled teaching positions - and expects to end the current fiscal year with a fund balance of $134.5 million, officials said during a budget hearing Thursday night.
The cash-strapped School District of Philadelphia is not as strapped as in recent years - due in part to unfilled teaching positions - and expects to end the current fiscal year with a fund balance of $134.5 million, officials said during a budget hearing Thursday night.
The district had anticipated spending $2.71 billion. The fund balance will be rolled over into the proposed $2.8 billion budget for 2016-17.
Although seemingly large, that $134.5 million represents less than one month's operating costs, the district's chief financial officer, Uri Monson, said during the hearing at district headquarters.
In addition to 139 teacher vacancies, the surplus is the result of a modest balance from last year, fuel cost savings, and other efficiencies, Monson said.
"There are good savings and bad savings. The savings from the vacancies are bad savings," he said in an interview. "Nobody in this building wants the vacancies."
Monson said that staffing cuts in the human resources office in recent years had hampered hiring, but that it was now "all hands on deck" to hire 800 teachers for next school year, a previously stated goal of Superintendent William R. Hite Jr.
City Councilwoman Helen Gym, a frequent critic of the School District, said district officials "violated the central responsibility that this district has by refusing to provide the most basic thing you are supposed to provide - a teacher in a classroom."
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