From losing teachers to slashing supply budgets, Philly principals detail what $225 million in cuts could mean to their schools

One Philadelphia school faces losing all of its classroom assistants. Another could cut programs for struggling readers. Others might drop teachers, counselors, and possibly most of their budgets for classroom supplies.

Facing a $300 million structural deficit, the Philadelphia School District is now braced for the most significant financial pain it’s had to endure in years. Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has ordered $225 million in budget cuts for next school year, 25% of which will come directly from classrooms.

Interviews with more than a dozen principals and others with direct knowledge of individual school budgets revealed that schools are facing grim financial outlooks — and spending choices will affect students. Principals received their budget numbers this month, and are now “between a rock and a hard place,” one said, forced to make tough calls such as: do I cut my music teacher next year, or programs for gifted students? Can I afford to keep this dynamic teacher with little seniority who really reaches my students? Should I risk disturbing building climate by axing the staff who help keep order?

With the cuts, “we simply will not have the bandwidth or the budget to meet the needs of our building,” said the principal, who, like others interviewed, asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to a reporter.

Other principals’ reactions ranged from “we’re squeezed, but we can make it work” to “this is likely to wipe away academic progress — or worse.”

In announcing the proposed budget cuts earlier this month, Watlington said no layoffs are planned. But absent new funding, schools would have to absorb $56 million, including the loss of more than 200 building substitutes, plus an additional 340 school-based positions. Employees whose positions are eliminated would be moved into other open jobs. Other savings would come from job and contract cuts in the district’s central office.

“It’s premature at this point to speak at this point about proposed budget cuts,” district spokesperson Monique Braxton said in response to the principals’ concerns.

And the cuts aren’t necessarily certain.

On Thursday, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker called a news conference to “make a significant announcement regarding funding aimed at protecting critical staff and supporting more than 198,000 public school students across Philadelphia.”

Less than an hour before the planned announcement, officials postponed, saying they would reschedule soon.

Still, if Parker does propose a new funding stream, she’d need City Council support. And the mayor, in her $7 billion city budget plan introduced earlier this month, had already proposed imposing new taxes on rideshare service and retail delivery. If passed, that 20-cent-per-ride additional fee for Uber and Lyft services is expected to bring in $9 million annually for the school district.

Either way, the clock is ticking. Principals must make decisions about discretionary spending and sign off on their budgets by spring break at the end of the month. The school board must pass a budget by the end of May, and City Council has to approve its budget, which includes district funding, by the end of June.

Watlington, who came to Philadelphia in 2022, said that knowing a structural deficit was looming and federal COVID relief funds would not last forever, he could have ordered cuts earlier in his tenure. But he chose not to, he said, because he wanted to demonstrate what district students could do if investments were made into classrooms citywide.

Philadelphia’s academic achievement has since increased faster than most big-city districts; student and teacher attendance is up, as is the graduation rate. Dropouts are down. And the school system now has its best-ever credit rating.

“We wanted teachers, principals, school-based staff, support staff, and the district staff to believe and know and have confidence — we know what to do to improve education,” Watlington said earlier this month.

But the district spent $300 million of its fund balance just to avoid position and program cuts for the 2025-26 school year. And now, the bills are coming due.

Watlington says he will eliminate the structural deficit with the $225 million in austerity measures for the 2026-27 school year, with trims of about $20 million annually until 2030, when the budget will finally be structurally balanced.

Schools’ budgets vary widely, with factors like student enrollment and special programs having major impacts. Schools that are academically on track get less funding than those that are off track.

One principal said they had been making small adjustments in the budget over several years, knowing that cuts were on the way. But not every school had that luxury, and overall, the district chose to spend a significant amount of its billion in federal COVID money to fill budget holes, not for one-time uses.

“We bought bodies, and now we can’t afford them anymore,” the second principal said. “This is just basic budgeting that you learn in principal school — you can’t buy people with temporary funds.”

Another principal, wrestling with “no good choices to make” said their school is losing teachers and will also have to cut elsewhere. And they’re not the worst-affected of schools, they said.

“We are squeezing and cutting programming that has direct impact on kids, but some of my more impacted colleagues say, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to meet my goals,’” the third principal said. “‘If I’m barely making my attendance goals and I’m cutting my [School Improvement Support Liaison], how am I going to meet that?’”

COVID and other special funding streams were generally allocated by the district based on student need, so severely underresourced schools are taking bigger hits as those funds dry up. The district is also halting extra funds to schools in the former Acceleration Network, an old grouping of district schools most in need of supports.

“All of a sudden higher needs schools now have a larger gap to fill,” said the third principal. “To go from all that money to where we are now, it’s a lot to drop all of a sudden.”

One principal said they are possibly cutting classroom assistants and a popular program that has elevated the school.

Like many school leaders, the fourth principal said they were going to cut climate staff, who are among the district’s lowest-paid workers, by either eliminating positions altogether or dropping workers’ hours. But that might jeopardize their willingness to remain in the job.

“In order to keep my people whole, I have to cut supplies for teachers,” the fourth principal said. “No matter how I slice this pie, no one gets enough.”

Principals have been encouraged to think of positions, not people, but many said they found that impossible, especially in a system with a high concentration of needy students, because the adults who choose to work with them often give so much. Several principals said they were not sleeping much as they wrestle with decisions that affect hundreds of students and dozens of adults.

Another principal described a budget where they were likely to have to send back to the classroom staff who are currently given time in the day to coach other teachers, work with small groups of students, or do other jobs supporting instruction.

“We’re still seeing our children behind academically from the pandemic, and we won’t be able to have interventionists, none of that stuff,” the fifth principal said. “Even if I wanted to purchase a teacher to teach a couple of classes and do reading specialist work, that’s out of reach. There’s no way I could do that.”

The fifth principal said they would have to cut funding to pay teachers to run extracurricular clubs. They might have to cut a counselor, and “we need them more than ever. They keep beating us up about attendance, and suspensions, but they are cutting the funding for positions and programs that help with those things.”

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, the union that represents district principals, said when the cuts were first announced that would be a tough budget season for her members.

And while the situation is not as acute as the early 2010s, when record-shattering state budget cuts meant the district had to make mass layoffs, she knows principals will have to make choices that feel impossible.

“If you were around in 2013, you can’t continue to do more with less,” Cooper said. “Now, the question is, ‘How do I make this work?’”

Everyone is facing some pain, said a sixth principal, hoping someone like the mayor will swoop in with resources to stave off at least some of the blows.

“We’re in a tough position it’s hard to say we have to cut somebody so we can have a functioning school,” the sixth principal said. “Or we keep everybody and we have to fundraise for paper all year. We’re all hoping that something is going to magically happen.”

It’s an especially grim time for many schools, with budget cuts and, separately, a $2.8 facilities plan that proposes permanently closing 18 schools — a move officials say is being made both to drive better academic achievement and equity, and because the district cannot continue to fund a system with 70,000 empty seats.

The implications of that are not lost on families, the second principal said.

“If we’re telling families we’re closing schools and we’re telling families we have to cut, we may be down to 110,000 kids next year,” he said. The district’s latest reported enrollment is 113,735 students.

Watlington has said he wants to grow the district’s enrollment, despite the challenges.

“I don’t want to hide or obscure the fact that [the cuts] will have some impact, because we’ll have to do more with less in some areas,” the superintendent said this month. “That said, we will not take our foot off the gas in terms of expectations, in terms of how we do the work.”