Ridge, who is supporting fellow Republican Sam Katz for mayor, said he was "astonished" and "absolutely awestruck" by Street's willingness to "turn over one of his prime responsibilities to someone else."

"It was almost breathtaking in what it says about his leadership compared to Sam Katz's," Ridge said in an interview from his Harrisburg office.

The Philadelphia schools are in a fiscal crisis. The current budget of $1.53 billion contains a funding gap of $56.3 million.

On Tuesday, Street said that within 30 days of being elected mayor he would propose that the jurisdiction of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority be broadened to include fiscal oversight of the Philadelphia school district.

Street noted that the city had been unable to convince the legislature to allot more money for the district, which spends on average $1,900 less per pupil than suburban districts.

He said that one way to gain political support for more state spending might be to give the state greater control over how money is spent.

The PICA board was created by the legislature in 1991 to help rescue the city's municipal finances. Street suggested it could do the same for the schools.

Ridge said Street's plan amounted to sloughing off the mayor's responsibilities to provide leadership over the schools.

"I don't think you generate much good will in Harrisburg when you say you want more money and, 'Oh, by the way, I don't want responsibility for the schools - I'm going to give it to someone else,' " Ridge said.

He said legislators were unlikely to vote more money for city schools until they thought the city was making the most of the money it had.

Ridge has given Katz $35,000 from his own campaign fund and has offered any help Katz might want in the mayor's race.

Ray Jones, Street's campaign spokesman, said yesterday that Ridge was putting out "the typical Republican line."

For the schools to thrive, Jones said, "we need to think about how do we develop some kind of authority to deal with this looming issue."

"The candidate has an idea and he has a plan," Jones said. "His detractors, while they criticize, have offered nothing on the table."

Mayor Rendell said Tuesday that Street's proposal merited investigation. He said that he himself had been trying to get the city and state to agree on "what kind of oversight the state would like in return for additional funding."

But State Rep. Dwight Evans, a Philadelphia Democrat and party leader in the State House, said yesterday he believed Street's idea was a bad one.

"I don't think PICA is the entity to do it," said Evans, who ran against Street in the May Democratic primary for mayor. "It doesn't have the know-how or capacity to do it."

He suggested instead that Street look to Evans' own school takeover bill, which was passed by the legislature and signed by Ridge last year.

Evans believes the governor and mayor could negotiate a somewhat "friendly" school takeover. Under the bill, a new ruling body, composed of two people appointed by the mayor and three by the governor, would hire an executive director who would run the school district. That director could shut down schools, rapidly transfer teachers from one school to another, and reallocate district resources as he or she saw fit.

For the takeover to occur, the district must be "distressed," which means it cannot pay its bills and has had to cut back so many services that it is not fulfilling its minimum requirements to educate the city's children.

"It will put the state on the hook" for making sure Philadelphia's children are learning, Evans said.

He argued that the way to help city schools already exists in the takeover law, also known as Act 46. "The answer is right under people's noses," Evans said.

The school unions have sharply criticized the Evans bill as anti-union. They said it would strip them of their collective bargaining rights.