The principals and assistant principals who attended the briefing, at the High School of Fashion Industries on West 24th Street in Manhattan, were greeted by two dozen parents and union leaders, chanting, “Yo, yo, Klein, don’t cut a dime.”  William H. McDonald, a Queens parent leader, said, “The state’s not to blame; it’s the mayor,” adding of parents: “I don’t know how much angrier they can get. He shouldn’t be balancing the budget on the backs of these kids.”  The $63 million is part of more than $640 million in new state aid stemming from a 1993 lawsuit by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a coalition of advocates, seeking more state money for city schools. As part of an agreement between the city and the state, as much as $385 million of the new money was to go to schools labeled by the state as failing or considered high-need because of poverty and other factors, like the numbers of students receiving special education services.  At the briefing, Mr. Klein said he had already corrected the injustices of the past by introducing a new school financing system that apportions money based on similar factors.  “When people say our high-needs schools are being underfunded, they don’t understand that last year we took a huge step toward solving that problem,” Mr. Klein said.  At a news conference on Thursday, Sheldon Silver, the State Assembly speaker, called the chancellor’s comments about Albany’s responsibility for the largest cuts a “smoke screen,” saying: “The chancellor’s cuts are for one reason and one reason alone, and that is the mayor’s proposed budget contains cuts. Period.”  The list of schools hardest hit includes those that are so high-performing or have so few high-need students that they are not eligible for certain pots of the new state money. It also includes new schools that the city considers ineligible because there is too little information to classify them as high-need or failing.  City schools officials said that in addition to the 74 hardest-hit schools, more than 400 others would face budget cuts of more than 3 percent if the state does not relax its rules.  Helaine Doran, deputy director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, pointed out that much of the new state money was not restricted to low- and poor-performing schools, saying, “We brought home the bacon and we got the money.” She called it “absolutely outrageous” for the city to “jeopardize the particular piece of money” intended to benefit the neediest students.  At Stuyvesant, a recent newsletter from the parents’ association noted that in anticipation of budget cuts, the school’s principal, Stanley Teitel, was planning to limit students to seven classes during the fall term. That prospect has caused outrage among parents at what is arguably the city’s most elite school, because it could diminish ambitious students’ transcripts and, by extension, their appeal to college admissions officers.  Paola de Kock, co-president of the Stuyvesant parents’ association, faulted the chancellor and mayor for putting parents at schools like Stuyvesant in a bind.  “What parent is really going to want to say, ‘Oh, we really need all this money, and the other schools, they don’t deserve it, or we don’t care’?” she said. “That’s what I think is a cynical ploy.”  “I don’t think the chancellor’s blame-shifting is going to work because it’s hard to sell an increase in state aid as ‘forcing’ budget cuts,” she added. “It is making us angry with the chancellor.”  Stewart Weiss, a parent leader at the selective Townsend Harris High School in Queens, said that budget cuts at the school, which are expected to be just under 5 percent, would be “devastating.” He said the principal would most likely cut after-school extracurricular activities.  “This is a school where all of the kids are under a lot of pressure, and they work extremely hard,” he said. “What keeps them going is the sense of community they get from all of the other things, like putting on concerts and plays. When you walk into that building after school hours, it’s buzzing with kids.”  But Dr. Weiss did not blame Albany.  “I think that Mayor Bloomberg is playing a political game with us,” he said.  Jon Roberts, co-president of the parents’ association at Bronx Science, said of the cuts, “Our school is being destroyed.”  He said that he was worried that the school would have to cut Advanced Placement courses and other special offerings, and that he was angry with both the city and the state. Of Mr. Bloomberg, he added, “He can increase the funding to education in terms of making education a higher priority.”  Robert Gebeloff and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: 74 City Schools Told to Expect 5% Budget Cut. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The city’s Department of Education released a list on Thursday of 74 schools, including its most prestigious high schools, that are to have their budgets for next year cut by more than 5 percent.