BRT thrives at expense of schools

In Philadelphia's struggling schools, $3.8 million could cover the salaries of 59 new school librarians. It could buy a year of new textbooks for 45,500 students, or dramatically reduce class sizes for nearly 4,000 kids.

Instead, the district spends that much each year on 78 clerical jobs at the Board of Revision of Taxes, all reserved for loyal political workers and their families.

"It's just this drain on the school district," said Helen Gym of Parents United for Public Education, an advocacy group.

"There's this constant, slow, steady drip, when you're cutting down to the bare bones."

Under a decades-old arrangement, more than a third of the BRT's workers are paid by the school district, not the city. That allows them to avoid the ban on political activity that applies to city workers.

The setup has proved impervious to attacks by reformers, who've been complaining about BRT patronage since Philadelphia was run by Republicans.

The district's last two leaders, scrounging for money to save things like bands and bus passes, tried to trim these positions but quickly ran into the realities of power and politics in Philadelphia.

In March 2007, then-schools chief Paul Vallas announced that it was time for the city "to simply pay your bills."

"Get them off our payroll or pay for them," Vallas said he argued. "This was always about patronage."

That was a direct challenge to party leaders.

"You guess who won that fight," said David B. Glancey, the BRT's former chairman and an ex-Democratic city leader.

To Glancey, Vallas was no reformer. The schools chief just wanted to control the jobs for his own political ends, Glancey said.

Vallas, now superintendent of schools in New Orleans, said that was "so patently absurd that it would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic that money was being taken from schoolchildren."

Tom Brady, Vallas' successor, said he tried to cut the workers, too, despite warnings from his senior staff that it would never fly at the School Reform Commission, the state-controlled board that oversees city schools.

They were right, Brady said.

"It was not a battle worth fighting at the risk of losing the war," said Brady, now superintendent in Providence, R.I.

Defending the patronage workers was Martin Bednarek, a former Democratic ward leader in the Northeast who served on the school board from 2003 until last month.