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The Philadelphia School Reform Commission voted to suspend portions of the state public school code Thursday night, saying it needed room to cap charter enrollment and shorten the timeline for closing schools. The moves, Chairman Pedro Ramos said, were necessary because of the School District's grim financial picture. The SRC recently borrowed $300 million to pay its bills just for the rest of the year, and a five-year plan projects a deficit of more than $1 billion if corrective steps are not taken.

THE SCHOOL REFORM Commission, using special powers stemming from the state's 2001 takeover of the Philadelphia School District, voted Thursday night to suspend two provisions in the Pennsylvania school code. The SRC voted 4-0 on both resolutions, allowing the district to impose enrollment caps on charter schools and to waive the requirement that it conduct public meetings on school closings three months before making a decision. As with many district issues these days, money was behind the decision to place limits on charter-school enrollment.

The Philadelphia School Reform Commission moved Wednesday to borrow $300 million - money it needs just to pay teachers, heat buildings, and buy books for the rest of the school year. Chairman Pedro Ramos made it clear that the SRC's back was to the wall and that the state of its finances constituted "dire circumstances" for the district. "I couldn't be more unhappy that we're in a situation where it's necessary to do a borrowing for the purposes of merely paying our bills," Ramos said.

The Philadelphia School Reform Commission renewed the operating agreement Wednesday for one charter school that agreed to overhaul its operations, and gave a troubled charter for students in foster care 12 months to improve. Then the commission heard from parents upset about proposed cuts in bus service for the Girard Academic Music Program, a South Philadelphia magnet school that draws students from all over the city. In often passionate remarks, parents from Girard said cutting yellow bus service for students in grades five through eight would be dangerous because the children carry expensive instruments that would tempt criminals on public transportation.

Parents from two charter schools whose founder and former top administrators are under federal indictment urged the Philadelphia School Reform Commission on Thursday to keep their schools open. "We want our school to continue with a new administration," said Noel Bauman, who has three sons at Planet Abacus Charter School. "There is no other way for our school to continue without that happening. " But Labaughn Clarke, mother of a student at Laboratory Charter School, praised that school's academics and implored the SRC not to overhaul the administration.

School Reform Commissioner Lorene Cary will go on indefinite medical leave Monday, officials said. Cary, a novelist, arts activist and scholar, said in an interview that her condition was temporarily debilitating but not life-threatening. A series of illnesses, including the asthma she has had since childhood, has left her sick and exhausted - and under doctor's orders to rest, she said. "I'm at 'half,'" she said Thursday. Asked when she might be able to return, Cary said, "I don't know.

SCHOOL REFORM Commission member Lorene Cary will take a temporary medical leave from her position, the city announced Thursday. In a letter Cary wrote to Mayor Nutter and to SRC Chairman Pedro Ramos, she said she was following her doctors' orders to rest and recover "so as not to turn temporary illness into chronic incapacity. " Cary, 55, who authored the novel The Price of a Child and runs the Art Sanctuary in North Philadelphia, joined the SRC after being nominated to the board by Nutter in October.

IN WHAT ONE member calls "bitter medicine," the School Reform Commission has approved a five-year financial plan for the school district to help deal with a $1.35 billion hole. The district plans to borrow $300 million to finance the current fiscal year and part of the next one, slash salaries by 26 percent over a five-year period from $858 million this year to $681 million in 2016-17 and close schools that "are underutilized and in poor condition," Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen said.

This story has been updated. THE YOUNG fifth-grader wanted to show his friend the plastic pellet gun he brought into school earlier this year. The principal, who knew the student had no history of violent outbreaks or suspensions, had no choice but to follow the district's Code of Student Conduct and call the police. Four days' suspension. Now it appears a charter school wants to keep him out because of his record, said David Lapp, staff attorney with the Education Law Center.