Is the promise in Promise Academy being broken?

Tucked in my recent story about "Occupy 440" - a group of school nurses protesting against the Philadelphia School District's latest round of budget cuts - was a line you may have missed:

District spokesman Fernando Gallard said the Promise Academies had had "significant cuts," including the elimination of the entire central office staff that supervised those schools, which was also axed as of Dec. 31.

Promise Academies, of course, are district-run turnaround schools, the signature initiative of former Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman. They operate with extra money and staff to turn around years of failure - and to combat years of inadequate resources. The first six Promise Academies opened in 2010; three more opened last fall. (Ackerman wanted to open 11, not three, but budget woes forced the School Reform Commission to drastically scale back that plan.)

Promise Academies initially operated on Saturdays and in the summer, with an extra hour of instruction daily.

Saturday school was dropped, and one extra hour a week was lopped off effective in September.

But those schools still get more resources than others, irking many in the schools that have had to make midyear cuts by eliminating programs and laying off nurses, aides, secretaries, and other crucial staff who keep schools safe and functioning.

"Separate and unequal is alive and well in Philadelphia!" one person shouted at the Occupy 440 protest Wednesday.

Besides closing the Promise Academy central office, Gallard said, all Promise Academies were forced to cut 2 percent out of their operating budgets. Other district schools had to make cuts of 1 percent to 3 percent, depending on school size.

Shutting the Promise Academy office doesn't mean the end of Promise Academies. It just means less direct support and a different reporting structure. The K-8 Promise Academies will fall under academic region 3, supervised by Francisco Duran. (Duran is the former head of the Promise Academies.) The high school Promise Academies will fall under the high school academic division, headed by Linda Cliatt-Wayman.

Is the district moving away from the Promise Academy model? Hard to say. But it certainly is signaling it doesn't have the money to run Promise Academies the way Ackerman envisioned them. Besides shutting the Promise Academy office and cutting some of the schools' extra instructional time, there have also been cuts in enrichment programs and mentoring programs and the elimination of school-based instructional specialists, summer professional development, centrally funded supplemental academic programs, and centrally funded library upgrades.

Early Promise Academy indicators show some progress - decreased violence, increased attendance, jumps in test scores. But those are results from last year, before the cuts took effect.

What do you think? Is the district honor-bound to do more for schools it has failed for years? Or does it simply not have the money to run this initiative?