The $150 million ax. (News connection: up-to-date and usable education information froms schools, government, business, research and professional organizations).

Severe budget woes continue to plague the New York City school system. Schools Chancellor Harold Levy has ordered immediate cuts to programs and services totaling $150 million. It is just the latest round of cuts to the nation's largest urban school district.

Levy said the emergency cuts--which were called for only a week before the start of school--were necessary to offset a dearth of state and local grants the district had been expecting. The Big Apple's school budget for the 2001-02 school year is $11.5 billion: the $150 million cut represents 1.3 percent.

Already, it has been a tough year for the school system. Prior to Levy's $150 million cut, the district was still smarting from criticism surrounding a $2.8 billion shortfall in its five-year construction budget. In addition, during the summer the district eliminated 1,500 jobs from the central office and administrative staffs in a massive restructuring aimed at saving another $100 million.

Indirectly, the district's ongoing budget woes may be causing other problems, namely the growing loss of strong teachers to suburban school districts.

According the city's United Federation of Teachers, from 1998 to 2000, more than 3,000 New York teachers left the district for suburban schools, which is the most in recent memory. The New York City school system employs about 80,000 teachers.

Though any number of factors can contribute to a teacher leaving a district--family changes, career readjustment, etc.--one of the major reasons is money. According to the union, the annual median salary for New York City teachers is around $49,000, compared to about $70,000 for nearby Westchester County instructors.

But New York City is not the only major urban district facing fiscal problems. Washington, D.C., also recently announced that it was facing an $80 million deficit in its budget, a shortfall that apparently caught administrators by surprise.

The deficit represents nearly 10 percent of the District of Columbia's $832 million schools budget, and officials claim most of the paucity was the result of extra spending on special education. Three central office finance employees were fired as a result of the unexpected shortfall, according to published reports.

Officials say the district can cover the deficit through transfers from within the budget and additional tax revenue received in the past year, but the matter comes at a time when district officials are trying to climb out from under years of poor school performance and even poorer perceptions.

"The $80 million shortfall is just plain sickening. Sickening because it represents a repeat of the same failures we've seen in the school system over the last decade, and sickening because there are other spending priorities that have been identified--needs that now simply will not be met for the foreseeable future," says Kathy Patterson, D.C. Board of Education Council member.