Prometheus 6   

OKLAHOMA CITY, Aug. 30 ? Angela Houston, the principal of Eisenhower Elementary School, spent this week hunkered down in her office here phoning unemployed teachers, trying to rebuild her staff after a dozen instructors lost their jobs in a state budget crisis last spring.

But even if Ms. Houston can hire teachers for all her classrooms, she worries about her school's morale. "The layoffs brought a big letdown," she said.

Dozens of other Oklahoma City schools were also reeling from the financial turmoil that forced the closing of seven schools and the dismissal of 600 teachers at the end of the last school year.

As children return to classrooms, many of the nation's 90,000 public schools are, as in Oklahoma City, feeling battered and worn down. Most states have reacted to declining tax revenues by trimming education spending, setting the stage for one of the most austere school years in memory.

In Alabama, where a budget crisis has left 38 of the state's 129 school systems on the verge of bankruptcy, Birmingham closed nine schools before the fall term began this month. Boston closed five schools and eliminated 1,000 jobs, including 400 teaching positions. Teachers lost jobs in cities like Toledo, Ohio; Norwich, Conn.; and Vista, Calif. In New Port Richey, Fla., school officials closed a popular 29-year-old science field trip center.

"School finances across the country are teetering on horrendous," said Michael Griffith, an analyst for the Education Commission of the States, a research group in Denver.

Many schools are raising revenues in new ways, charging students to participate in sports, plays, band or other activities that were once free. The Los Alamitos District in Orange County, Calif., is urging parents to make a $40 donation for each day a student misses classes, to compensate for state aid forfeited through the absence, David Hatton, a spokesman, said.

If austerity is challenging parents and educators at schools across America, the new term also appears likely to pose a critical test for the education law, called No Child Left Behind, which President Bush has made a centerpiece of his domestic agenda. Mr. Bush developed its central concept ? using standardized tests to hold schools accountable for student achievement ? as governor of Texas in the 1990's, when the economy was booming. Flush with tax revenues, Texas sent squads of experts to schools labeled as failing to help them sort out their educational program.

But the education law, which seeks to replicate Mr. Bush's Texas experiment nationally, is taking force in an economic downturn, and a fierce debate is under way about whether the federal government will provide enough help to schools the law identifies as failing, or simply pass the costs of the law on to the states.

"We believe the law is amply funded," Dan Langan, a Department of Education spokesman, said. "There's more money than ever before to achieve the intent of the law."[p6: note the statement is "amply" not "fully"]

But legislators in several states have introduced proposals for those states to opt out of the federal law if its costs are not fully financed by the federal government. By doing so, however, they would also lose all federal aid to low-income schools.