"When you live in the city, as soon as you have your first kid, you start thinking about schools," he said. "You hope your district will get better. Instead, it gets worse. Unless you have $35,000 a year [for] private school, at some point, you go, 'I just can't do this.' "

If their house sale goes through, the couple plan to move to a suburb where they hope their children, ages 5, 4, and 2, can attend fully functioning schools. Schools, Hackford said, that not only can afford adequate staffing for nurses, coaches, and field trips, but the bedrock basics. Books. Librarians. Guidance counselors. Secretaries to answer the phones.

That was the conclusion reached, too, by Marcy and Matthew Gialdo, who reluctantly left Philadelphia in the spring after living in the city's Mount Airy section for 10 years.

The Gialdos had sent their two children to a Quaker elementary school but knew they could not afford tuition that soars past $20,000 at most private high schools. After trying to win spots for their children in charter schools through the lottery system, they gave up.

"The chances of getting them into a good public school were slimmer and slimmer," said Marcy Gialdo. "And over the past few years, we watched programs eliminated and options lessened."

In May, the family decamped to Springfield Township in Montgomery County.

"It was a very hard decision," said Gialdo, 39, a triathlon coach. "I loved my neighborhood in Philadelphia.. . . The diversity was great for our family. We could walk everywhere. We had public transportation. We gave up a lot when we moved. But the school situation was just not possible."

As officials sparred over where to find the money, Gialdo, a former New Jersey public school teacher, said, "I feel there's a lot of finger-pointing and grandstanding. It's irresponsible of us as adults to do this to the kids. . . . How many years does it take to figure this out? . . . The children are the ones who get hurt."

After receiving the "urgent" request that Greenfield Elementary School's principal sent to parents, asking them to donate $613 for each child enrolled, Tomika Anglin was heartsick and angry.

"A lot of people cannot afford the money schools are asking for," said Anglin, a 45-year-old single mother. "And they recognize that it may be becoming normal to ask parents to contribute like that."

Anglin's solution for now: home-school her daughter, who would be starting sixth grade.

("But there are no secretaries at the school right now, so I have not formally withdrawn her.")