The School District of Philadelphia, facing a more than $300 million deficit, threatened to lay off employees, and today, it did.
Almost 3,800 school district employees will lose their jobs on July 1, Schools Superintendent William Hite announced the layoffs during a 4:30 p.m. news conference. The figure represents almost 20 percent of the school district’s staff.
Secretaries, counselors, teachers, support staff and assistant principals will be pink-slipped, district spokesman Fernando Gallard said earlier this afternoon. All but three assistant principals — 127 — will be let go, he said.
One of those who will lose his job is Rob Caroselli, an assistant principal at Northeast High School. This afternoon, he said he and four other Northeast High assistant principals heard they would be laid off.
He said the high school’s support staff, secretaries and counselors would be idled, too. He said a total of 43 will lose their jobs at Northeast, which has more than 3,000 students enrolled.
Northeast’s principal, Linda Carroll, joined Hite and other school principals at the news conference to praise the staffers she is losing. Northeast’s guidance counselors, she said, have helped the school’s students get into many colleges and universities and have also helped them get scholarships.
Other principals complained that they won’t even have staffers to answer their schools’ phones.
The layoffs follow the School Reform Commission’s adoptions of a so-called Doomesday Budget last week. That budget will be amended if there is an infusion of cash from the state and the city as well as givebacks from the Philadelphia Federal of Teachers. ••
