If a state oversight board could help pull the city out of fiscal disaster in the early '90s, mayoral candidate John Street figures it might work again, this time for the Philadelphia School District.

Street said the next mayor will have no more than five or six months to deal with a looming fiscal crisis that will virtually shut down the school system a year from now.

Without quick action, he said yesterday, "the school system is headed for catastrophe."

The so-called fiscal crisis has in fact been a reality for at least three or four years, and the Rendell administration has executed a spate of legal and political maneuvers for more state money, to no avail.

Street, a typical government insider who pledged to make his first year in office "the year of the child," has come up with a pitch that would simply expand the scope of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority from its current focus on city finances to a dual oversight role covering city and school finance.

By giving the state a more direct say in the funding of the district, Street hopes he can win political support for more state dollars for the schools.

An expanded PICA might be the conduit for new state money and it might also issue bonds as it did on behalf of a city government then coping with an enormous deficit, Street said, but many of the details will need to be worked out with state officials.

Mayor Rendell was quick to praise his Democratic ally's idea.

"I have been trying to get the governor's office and the Legislature to focus on the same basic thing. Sitting down, figuring out what kind of oversight the state would like in return for additional funding and putting in guidelines on how the school district would function."

But Bob Barnett, the campaign director for Republican mayoral candidate Sam Katz, said Street's idea "is about not being a leader, it's about escaping responsibility."

House Republican Majority Leader John Perzel of Philadelphia reacted with disdain toward Street's plan.

"Did it take him all summer to come up with this?" Perzel asked. "Street wants to get elected mayor and then give the headache to someone else."

Perzel said he wouldn't dismiss Street's idea because Perzel said he has been pressuring Gov. Ridge to declare the school dictrict a "distressed system" and take it over.

Perzel called Rendell and Street "hypocrites" for signing expensive contracts with school teachers and then several years later crying for help when the school district budget falls into deep deficit.

Not all Republicans, however, were dissing Street's initiative. State Rep. George T. Kenney Jr., R. Phila., said he has introduced bills that would do what Street is suggesting.

"I guess I'd like to hear why it shouldn't be tried," Kenney said.

Street said he's well aware that his oversight-for-cash proposal might become enmeshed in the ongoing debate over school vouchers, which he opposes. But he said "it would be irresponsible" for him to unilaterally declare that vouchers are off the bargaining table when the governor and many legislators clearly want them there.

Current PICA director Joe Vignola said his troops are ready to review the School District's finances whenever the Legislature or a judge tells them to.

Three years ago, Judge Doris Smith ordered a PICA review of the district, but her ruling was set aside by the State Supreme Court.

Staff writer Dave Davies contributed to this report.