THE STATE BUDGET : Welcome Relief Offered for Education : Finances: Budget hike of 2% for schools and colleges cheers officials. But university students would still pay higher fees and growth of K-12 class sizes would not be reversed.

Three dark years without across-the-board funding increases have given way to a proposed 1995-96 budget that represents the first light of a fiscal dawn for California’s public schools and three systems of higher education.

Gov. Pete Wilson on Tuesday called for about $1 billion more for the 1,001 elementary and secondary school districts across the state--about half of that to cover the costs of more students and half to provide a 2.2% increase in general school funding. That adds up to about $61 per student more next year.

Reflecting the state’s rosier revenue picture this year, Wilson also plans to give districts a bump of about $150 million in funding in the next few months. That money, earmarked for such things as books, computers and deferred maintenance, includes--of particular interest to school districts affected by the Northridge earthquake--$20 million toward quake repair costs not covered by federal funds.

Students attending California’s publicly funded colleges and universities can anticipate paying higher fees under the governor’s plan. But officials from the University of California, California State University and community college systems all said the situation is better than it has been in recent years, when deep budget cuts forced them to trim services while charging students more.

For the public schools in the state’s kindergarten-through-12th-grade system, the new money would not be enough to reverse the trend of growing class sizes, make much progress in carrying out long-delayed building repairs or provide any significant increases in teacher salaries.

For the dozens of special purpose programs--which cover everything from books and bus service to special instruction for gifted students and court-ordered desegregation programs--it was a mixed bag, with some to receive small increases and others facing cuts.

Even so, educators were happy to be offered any new money at all, given that the overall state spending proposed in next year’s budget is almost the same as this year, and many health and welfare programs will have to cope with deep cuts.

“It’s a plus and that’s more . . . than we have had in the last number of years, so I am excited about it,” said Supt. Sid Thompson of the 640,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District, the state’s largest.

However, the governor’s proposed budget, if passed as written, would not provide enough money to keep the district from having to make program cuts to fund teacher salaries at their current level, Thompson said, or help make more than $700 million in repairs to aging and run-down school buildings.

The budget plan calls for community colleges to get a 2.2% increase--the same percentage increase as the K-12 system--or $55 million. The colleges also would get a onetime increase in funds for the current year and money for expansion next year, meaning they would have to turn away fewer prospective students. Fees would go up $2 per unit, or about $48 per year for a full-time student.

Although all of those items could change before adoption of a final budget, Chancellor David Mertes said “the starting point is better than it’s been in four years.”

The University of California had asked for a general fund increase of $145 million but, under Wilson’s proposal, would have to settle for a quarter of that. Wilson said the 2% increase in UC funding for the coming year would be followed by increases averaging 4% annually over the following three years.

Bill Baker, UC’s vice president of university and external relations, said the four-year commitment is more significant than the small size of the coming year’s increase. He said the UC Board of Regents will have to balance the need for higher student fees against its goal of raising faculty salaries to keep them competitive with other universities and the directives from Wilson to graduate students in less time and reduce overhead.

On the plus side, Baker said, the proposed budget would allow the UC system to admit all eligible students and to make significant progress in its building program over the next four years.

CSU’s situation is similar. The proposed increase of 2% is about a fifth of that requested by the system’s Board of Trustees and, as a result, fees for undergraduates will go up 10%, to $1,740 per year. Fees for graduate students will increase 15%, to $1,830 a year.

“This year will be the toughest of the next few years,” said CSU Chancellor Barry Munitz.

In addition, the budget would allocate the CSU and UC systems $600 million each over the next four years to pay for capital improvements, including retrofitting campuses to avoid future earthquake damage.

As much as they welcomed the possibility of new money for next year, educators also worried about the longer term impact of Wilson’s desire to cut income and corporate taxes by 15% over the next three years.

Under state education finance law, public schools and community colleges are guaranteed a certain percentage of the increased revenues that can be expected to flow into state coffers as the economy recovers--an increase estimated to be between $28 billion and $37 billion over five years. But educators say a tax cut would reduce the size of that pool, making it that much more difficult for schools to make up for the cutbacks they have made over the past four years.

Referring to the tax cut, state schools Supt. Delaine Eastin said, “I have some real questions whether this is a quick and dirty way to throw a bone to the taxpayers. If you have no long-term vision for our children, maybe that’s not a problem. You just take the money and run.”

Overall, however, Eastin said she supported the Wilson budget plan and his proposals to rewrite the education code and to shift more responsibility for the quality of schools to individual campuses, students, parents and teachers. “The emphasis on more local control is consistent with the direction that we have been moving with programs like restructuring and charter schools,” she said.

Times education writer Amy Wallace contributed to this story