The Fenty administration’s plan to balance the D.C. school budget counts on millions of dollars in private donations not yet promised, and deep cuts to education staff positions.

Facing a schools budget deficit that could reach more than $100 million, Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said the D.C. Council would have to approve $81 million needed to fill the gap would have to be approved from the city’s supplementary budget.

Beyond that, Rhee said the city will solicit $10 million in donations from corporations and other private groups that the chancellor said had a “tremendous interest” in helping the city’s schools succeed.

Then, the city would seek to save additional millions by cutting staff members in the school’s central office and by a hiring and purchasing freeze.

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The central office is a large focal point, as administrators hope to save $2.5 million by getting rid of ineffective workers and to put a freeze on the purchase of central office supplies and materials.

In order to fire central office workers, the D.C. Council would have to pass a controversial proposal changing the workers’ status, a move that has already been delayed by at least a week.

The mayor said he was not discouraged by the postponement and that “there’s nothing to say that the Council shouldn’t have their own review process.”

He and Rhee on Tuesday also said they planned to stop filling vacancies of nonessential central office positions to save $2 million and to halt individual schools’ supply and materials purchases to put $3.8 million back into the budget.

And a number of programs that were announced as part of the proposed school-closures plan will not be implemented this school year so as to reduce spending by close to $7 million.

“This will not impact any current programs,” Rhee said. “We were just hoping to get a jump-start on introducing these programs.”

The potential $100 million budget deficit was identified about two weeks ago in a memo from the finance office that featured an accompanying list of 125 employees who were hired yet not included in the schools budget.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com