Butkovitz pointed out that Feather Houstoun, who heads the Philadelphia School Reform Commission's finance committee, said at a commission meeting two weeks ago that without intervention, "the school district was going to have such a pile-up of a cash deficit that we're basically not going to be able to pay people in July for work they did in June."
Butkovitz said Houstoun's comment "certainly suggests that even school district management has substantial doubt about the ability of the district to continue as a going concern."
As the independent auditor of the district's annual comprehensive financial report, the controller's office is required by government accounting standards to include warnings and to outline its concerns in footnotes to the report, he said.
District spokesman Fernando Gallard Tuesday said the district stood by Knudsen's statement last week that: "We can fully assure that the school district is in no danger of failing to meet its debt service and payroll obligations in the foreseeable future as a result of the actions we have already implemented and intend to implement."
The SRC recently approved measures that would save $23.4 million and reduce the current funding gap to $37.7 million. These included cuts to central office budgets, a drastic scaling back of summer school, and imposing furloughs, salary freezes, and new health-benefit contributions for nonunionized employees.
Gallard said the district would continue to work with the city controller's office and "provide any information it might require."
Tuesday's letter from Butkovitz is the latest in a series of exchanges that began last week when the controller said he might have to include the warnings in the annual report unless the district could provide information that answered his concerns.
