The district's fiscal year starts July 1.
Three weeks ago, Gov. Corbett proposed a $27.3 billion spending plan that would cut state support for public schools by $1.1 billion. At that time, district officials said they estimated that the district's budget gap after July 1 would be at least $465 million. And they anticipated cutting 30 percent of the central office.
But at a budget briefing Wednesday, Michael Masch, the chief finance officer, and Deputy Superintendent Leroy Nunery said analyses of mandated cost increases, such as contracted raises and charter school payments, had created an even more dire financial scenario.
Masch said the district had never faced a financial crisis like the $629 million funding gap, and he said districts across the state were reeling from the proposed cuts.
"What the governor has proposed is unprecedented," Masch said. "We cannot find a year in which the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has proposed a reduction even close to what has been proposed for next year."
The Philadelphia schools alone will receive $293 million less.
As required by law, the School Reform Commission earlier Wednesday adopted a $2.7 billion lump-sum budget that reflects expected local, state, and federal revenue and begins the budgeting process for the next fiscal year.
The current year's budget totals $3.2 billion.
In an effort to reduce layoffs, the administration will announce an early-retirement and voluntary termination program in the next few weeks, Masch and Nunery said. Layoff notices will not be handed out until the district sees how many people sign up to leave.
"The thing that we have tried to do is inform the staff about what is going on," Nunery said. "In the next two to three weeks people will have a better sense of their position."
