Wilson Seeks to Cut School Funding Plan : Budget: Governor faces ‘fight of his life’ in trying to eliminate $2.3 billion from earlier proposal, Supt. Honig says.

Setting up a major confrontation with the Democrats who control the Legislature, Gov. Pete Wilson said Thursday that he may try to cut as much as $2.3 billion from his previous school spending proposal so he can erase the state’s budget deficit in one year without raising taxes.

The Republican chief executive called on Democratic lawmakers to “come to grips with reality” and “have some guts” by limiting schools to the minimum they are entitled to receive under Proposition 98, the voter-approved constitutional amendment that sets funding guidelines for public education.

“What we are saying is we think it is necessary to deal with all the cuts that are going to be required,” Wilson told reporters. “There is going to be some reduction in education spending.”

Wilson was condemned by Senate Leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) and state schools Supt. Bill Honig. Honig said Wilson is in for “the fight of his life” next week when he tries to push the proposal through the Legislature.

Honig said the cut, at a time when 200,000 additional students are pouring into the public schools, will mean a reduction of $225 per student from this year’s spending--the equivalent of more than 30,000 teachers, 10,000 aides and 10 million textbooks.

“If this is what he wants to do, you can kiss the future of this state goodby,” Honig said in an interview. “He will be held politically accountable.”

Roberti said the proposed cut was “unacceptable” and “just too drastic” at a time when California faces stiff economic competition from Japan and Germany, whose public school graduates are said to be better prepared for the workplace than Americans.

Wilson’s statement on the budget, his first in any detail in at least two weeks, comes as he and Republican legislative leaders are fine-tuning a budget-balancing plan to compete with Democratic proposals for closing an estimated $10.7-billion state budget gap.

That gap represents what it would cost to repay the $3.8-billion deficit expected at the end of the current year, rebuild an emergency reserve to $1.2 billion and offer all services at their current levels while dealing with more students, welfare recipients and prison inmates.

Democrats propose stretching repayment of the deficit with a budget that would protect education funding but cut spending for welfare, Medi-Cal, aid to the aged, blind and disabled and renters. The Democrats also want to limit tax deductions for business and the affluent and extend a half-cent sales tax that is supposed to expire in 1993.

Wilson said a two-year budget is unacceptable and he insisted that the entire deficit be erased with spending cuts. He wants to repeal the renters tax credit but opposes all other tax increases.

Funding for education is complicated by the provisions of Proposition 98, which voters passed in 1988 and amended in 1990. The measure guarantees kindergarten through community college programs about 40% of the state’s general fund.

Under Wilson’s proposal, schools could lose as much as $2.3 billion from the $18.4 billion in state aid they would otherwise receive. But Wilson aides said the governor may find a way to recalculate Proposition 98 to soften the blow.

State aid accounts for about 60% of school budgets, with the rest coming mainly from federal funds and property tax revenue.

The Wilson proposal, if enacted, would set off another wave of spending cuts in California schools, on top of those almost every district has enacted to cope with the budget Wilson proposed in January. Some schools have eliminated all counselors, others have eliminated periods from the school day and many are scheduling larger classes, Honig said.

In hopes of heading off a confrontation with Democrats, Wilson said he has agreed to meet with them today after at first calling off further negotiating sessions.

Times staff writer Carl Ingram contributed to this story.