Kathy Matheson

Mayor Michael Nutter called for a shared sacrifice among city, state and union leaders on Thursday to help the Philadelphia schools avoid devastating budget cuts.

When students at Pittsburgh’s Linden Elementary School sit down to take the PSSAs starting Monday, Kathy Newman’s third-grader will be sitting out.

Two former city school principals caught up in a widespread cheating probe have surrendered their administrative certifications in lieu of discipline, state education officials confirmed Wednesday.

With the cost and quality of charter schools dominating the public education debate in Pennsylvania, lawmakers face at least a dozen major bills seeking better accountability and governance of such schools, which are publicly financed but independently run.

Talk about a baptism by fire: On the first day of Lauren Colegrove’s journalism internship at Catholic News Service in Rome, the pope announced his resignation.

When ninth-grader Zach Kaufmann found out his school was one of 27 targeted for closure in Philadelphia, he fought back. But his passion for Carroll High School was no match for the district’s dire financial situation.

Education officials in the city will vote Thursday on whether to close more than 10 percent of the district’s schools, a potentially money-saving move that opponents contend will irreparably damage dozens of neighborhoods.

School activists are using unusual tactics to fight a contested proposal to overhaul the nearly bankrupt Philadelphia school district: They’ve gone to the city ethics board.

It sounds more like a restaurant order than a school lunch menu: baked ziti with a side of roasted fennel salad and, for dessert, cinnamon apple rice pudding. But that’s one of the meals offered in the cafeteria at People For People Charter School in Philadelphia. And it’s served family-style.

In 11 years of teaching, ditching students’ desk chairs in favor of yoga balls is one of the best decisions Robbi Giuliano thinks she ever made.