by KYW's Mike Dunn
Mayor Street is blasting the Philadelphia School District for suddenly finding a $70-million deficit that he calls “a financial failure of the greatest magnitude.” And the School District chief is firing right back.
What bothers Mayor Street most about the district’s $70-million deficit is that school officials gave no early warnings, particularly when they testified last spring in City Council:
”I can’t think of a set of circumstances where somebody in the finance department wouldn’t know. I just can’t imagine that you just wouldn’t know that. Its just too much money. It's 70 million dollars!”
The mayor went on to call it a financial failure of the greatest magnitude:
“I have never seen anything like that in all of my 27 years in local government. I have never seen anything like that.”
Schools CEO Paul Vallas says the mayor's position is nonsense:
“The budget deficit constitutes less than three percent of our total budget, so it's easily manageable.”
And Vallas points out that Street has had his own budget difficulties:
“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Vallas said the mayor is being disingenous, in part because the city doesn’t pay its bills for using school district properties. And Vallas said if he wants more money from a mayor, he’s better off going to Michael Bloomberg in New York:
“If I want schools to be adequately funded, I’d be better off petitioning Bloomberg in New York to make Philadelphia the sixth borough.”
The School Reform Commission says it will trim some school programs to cut the deficit and replenish a reserve fund. The size of the cuts could go as high as $100 million.
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