District budget slashes deep: Nearly 4,000 could lose jobs

The Philadelphia School District unveiled the details of the cuts needed to overcome a historic $629 million deficit yesterday — and they weren't pretty.

The worst of the cuts will hit the district's teachers, more than 1,200 of whom will be out of work this summer unless the district gets more money from the city, state or federal government.

"We have an unprecedented level of revenue decline," said Michael Masch, the district's chief financial officer. "There has never been a year to our knowledge in which school district revenue has declined at all, not in decades."

Here are some of the grim cuts:

Programs that will be cut:

The district and education supporters are still lobbying against Corbett's $292 million cut, but with Republicans solidly in charge of the Legislature, there's not much hope for much money to be restored.

What is clear is that most of the cuts will affect schools.

Class sizes will revert to the maximums stipulated in contracts. Kindergarten to third grades will have 30 students, and fourth through 12th grades will have 33 students.

Meanwhile, the district is hoping it can renegotiate contracts with its unions to the tune of $75 million in savings. But it's unknown whether any unions will be willing to talk.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, maintains he's not willing to talk about reopening the contract for the district's largest union.

Jordan also expressed his outrage by the "unconscionable" cuts the district made to early childhood education that will affect more than 1,000 children.