Early-learning center, 40 jobs are budget casualties

During a budget presentation to the School Reform Commission in May, district officials warned that drastic cuts that will harm students would be made if enough funding from the state didn't come through.

They weren't bluffing.

Almost half of the district's 21 early-childhood centers will close this week and at least 40 nonteaching assistants and other school support staff have been demoted or laid off, according to Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union.

The cuts, and others in the district, are cost-saving measures that officials said balanced a $3.2 billion budget approved by the SRC in May.

But the cutting doesn't appear to extend to Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's administration.

Administrative salaries, which have risen since the state takeover of the district in 2002, continue to rise under Ackerman.

"It is unconscionable that the district continues adding high-paid administrators at the same time it cuts staff and programs that provide direct benefit to students and families," Jordan said.

District officials stand by their latest changes in the top level of Ackerman's administration, which they described as "budget-neutral."

"The new positions announced through this realignment are largely replacements for other positions in the prior organizational structure," district spokesman Fernando Gallard said of a host of changes this week.

"Our goal is that the realignment of staff be budget-neutral and that it accelerates learning in our schools. Until the entire reorganization is complete, it would be premature - and incorrect - to assume that the realignment will add to the district's budget."

Among the more-crucial positions being cut in schools are climate managers, created in 2004 under then-superintendent Paul Vallas, who aid in discipline.

Also being cut are the learning centers, hubs for year-round infant-through-prekindergarten child care, as well as before- and after-school programs for school-age children.

Included in the recent layoffs were 11 community-relations liaisons - among them Violet Sutton-Lawson, who protected Asian students being beaten by mobs at South Philly High - and most of whom grossed no more than $40,000.

Seventeen nonteaching assistants, four school-community coordinators, three secretaries and 14 parent ombudsmen were also laid off.