Philly schools announce more than 300 layoffs
The cuts are mainly to special-education assistants and noontime aides. More layoffs could come without cigarette tax approval.
IN WHAT HAS BECOME an annual rite of summer, the Philadelphia School District announced more than 300 layoffs yesterday.
The 342 layoffs largely affect special-education classroom assistants and noontime aides, but do not include any teachers. The district began to send out notices yesterday.
District spokeswoman Raven Hill said the downsizing is not related to the delay of the Philadelphia cigarette tax in the General Assembly, which threatens roughly $45 million for the cash-strapped district this year. She said most of the cuts are a result of principals' decisions about individual school budgets.
If the cigarette tax is not resolved by Aug. 15, the district could be forced to make hundreds of additional staff cuts or shorten the school year to close a $93 million deficit, Superintendent William Hite said earlier this week.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents about 330 of the affected employees, decried the cuts and said it would work to restore them.
"At a time when our schools already lack nurses, counselors, librarians and other services, the planned layoff of over 300 instructional support personnel is yet another crippling blow to the schoolchildren who rely most on the support provided by these educators," PFT president Jerry Jordan said in a statement.
"The loss of these services is a tragedy for our neediest students and an unacceptable way to run a school district," Jordan added.
Helen Gym, co-founder of Parents United for Public Education, said her group is exploring legal action in connection with the layoffs because parents were already concerned about the lack of access to special education, language and library services.
"This is about what students are constitutionally mandated and legally entitled to have," Gym said in an email.
The breakdown of the layoffs is: 157 special-education classroom assistants, 147 noontime aides, 15 teacher assistants, eight assistant principals, four career and technical support assistants, three conflict resolution specialists, two library assistants, two community relations liaisons, two Central Office employees, one bilingual counseling assistant and one sign-language interpreter.