Usually, it works like this: turn the lights on and yell “surprise!” Unfortunately, students and teachers have been left in the dark by recent budgetary policy in Budapest's seventh district . Stunned by an early January funding cut, activated from the Central government and trickled into the local district mayor’s office, school officials have reacted by turning off lights in a desperate measure to save money. Effectively, the government's move acts as a fifty percent pay cut, mid-stride. Schools expecting the funding have already spent their half-year (now learning it was the whole year’s) budget by January, leaving them with enough money to pay teachers' salaries, but nothing for utilities, chalk or even toilet paper. “We hope the students don't notice,” says Dob Street Primary School (Dob Utcai Kettnyelvu Altalanos Iskola) director Edit Márta, “we never want them to feel like they are getting less.”

Márta explains that in the past local authorities usually matched the funds of the central government, but because of last year's elections (and hence a new government in the VII district) coffers are dry. The local authority and the central government are playing a typical blame-it-on-the-other-guy game. Dismissing the excuses, Márta says, “From this point the only important thing in this situation is where any incoming money at the district level goes.” After school authorities called a meeting to discuss the situation, district mayor Zoltán Szabó promised that more money would come at the mid-year, but no one is certain from where.

The Dob Street School has 525 students, first through eighth grade, with a 1:13 teacher-student ratio; it offers additional technical vocational training after the eighth grade as well a bi-lingual program they had hoped to expand. Now Márta just hopes the programs won't have to be eliminated. She is currently even considering dropping the photocopy machine to reduce expenses.

“We are always trying to cut corners here; when spring comes we are always turning down the lights. Take, for example, the fact that our telephone bill is only 100,000 forints for the entire year.” Márta frets, “We can’t save up anymore.” District authorities had Márta scrambling to verify every single call on the year's telephone bill, forcing teachers to cross-reference class rosters to find the few stray calls that were not easily accountable.

Most school districts are caught in the crunch with even a few closings in the fifteenth district and surprisingly, also in the third district even though Buda schools have been comparably immune to the funding problem. All seven schools and nine kindergartens are affected in Márta's district. “The most important is to make sure that the heads of schools are willing to cooperate; we don't want to work against each other.”