In its final budget, the legislature came up with $22 million in new grant money over Gov. Corbett's initial proposal, but it declined to provide $57 million in charter school reimbursements that the district had been banking on.
In the past, Pennsylvania school districts were reimbursed for part of the cost of educating charter school students, but there was no indication that would continue for the 2011-12 school year.
"Our costs will be over $500 million for charters next year, and we will receive no earmarked funding from the state to help pay for that," Masch said.
The district has already laid off more than 3,400 employees and made deep cuts to programs and schools. The city came up with $53 million, which helped restore yellow bus transportation, some accelerated schools and early-childhood programs, and an initiative to keep class sizes low in kindergarten through third grade.
But now, more savings must be found.
Helen Gym, a founder of Parents United for Public Education and frequent district critic, said the current administration had made too many "tenuous budget assumptions. They were dramatically off-base, and that's obviously a serious concern."
Many parents and some City Council members have questioned the district's priorities and pointed to its summer program and expansion of Promise Academies - overhauled schools that receive extra resources - as programs that should be cut.
But Gym also takes issue with the governor and legislature.
"Corbett's budget seems to go out of its way to want to punish Philadelphia in particular and poor districts in general," she said.
Philadelphia, which educates about 10 percent of all children statewide, absorbed 25 percent of the total cut in state aid to all districts. The district's state funding was reduced by nearly $300 million.
Also still up in the air is how the district will get $75 million in givebacks from its five unions. It has set Thursday as the deadline for concessions.
