It looks like even more bad news is coming to the Philadelphia school system, and that is really the last thing that they needed, as the school system has taken several hits in the recent past.

The current problem is that the city’s school district is in even more debt that they through that they were. A botched budget means that 2,700 service employee members have been given their layoff notices, in order to trim down $61 million from its budget by the beginning of June.

Union President George Richezza told the following toe a reporter for My Fox Philly about the situation, “We are the pulse of the school district. Nothing moves within a school district on the educational side unless we do our jobs – our bus attendants, our drivers pick up children…Every child that goes to school in a public school has a clean, safe, healthy environment that get there, and make sure when they do get there, that the educational process does not stall.”

It is estimated that about 500 workers will not get their scheduled raises this year; they are also being forced to take on furlough days and pay a greater share of their own health care.

In addition any worker who has a salary that is greater than $75,000 will be forced to take a pay cut.

This is not the first cut that Philadelphia school workers have had to make in the recent past. Early in January 1,400 worker were laid off. Here is an excerpt from that coverage:

“Things have not been great for the schools in the city of Philadelphia, as you already know if you live in the area, or if you follow the coverage on this site. The district was dealt another blow today when a third round of layoffs rocked the schools. This time it was 1,400 employees that got the boot. While these layoffs were not to the teaching staff, instead they came to the blue-collar workers who deal in facilities and transportation maintenance services; this is still a serious loss of jobs for the city.

This was not the first mass layoff for the city of Philadelphia in the last 12 months. In September the city’s school district had to cut jobs by about 850. Then over the summer roughly 1,000 teachers were cut from the budget as well.  So on the whole the schools have shed more than 3,000 jobs since the end of the last school year.

At the current moment however the officials for the school district are hoping that the settlement of a dispute with the workers union can mitigate some of the layoffs. If the members of the Local 32BJ, Service Employees International Union, are willing to make some concession than they will be able to keep some of the jobs.”
There you have it. It looks like things are going to get worst for the Philadelphia schools workers and the children before things get better and hopefully things will get better soon.