It was too late for Trilby McClammy to react to Durham Public Schools' $14.7 million budget shortfall last year that led to the elimination of 298 positions, including 139 teachers.

This year, she's wasting no time.

McClammy, president of the Durham Council of PTAs, is leading an effort to push county commissioners to give more money to the schools. Hundreds were expected to attend a community meeting with county commissioners Tuesday at Jordan High School. The same happened during a similar gathering last week.

School officials will unveil their 2010-11 budget April 29. Proposed cuts, presented to board members on Thursday, include eliminating 292 positions, including more than 200 teachers. The district anticipates its budget - $448.3 million this year - will be $20 million short due to cuts in county and state funding.

The district, like other county departments, has been told reduce its county funding by 3 percent, or about $3 million.

McClammy recently sent a letter to parents highlighting the county's $92 million fund balance, an account used to manage cash flow throughout the year . But only $36 million of that money can be used, all of which is allocated, Durham County Manager Mike Ruffin recently explained. The rest must be held in reserve to maintain the county's credit rating.

"In all candor, the county does not have any additional funds in its reserves that it could appropriate to assist with the school system," he said.

Those funds need to be reallocated, McClammy said.

"Cutting teachers only increases class sizes," she said. "We can't afford for classes to be any bigger then they are now. Teachers become more like babysitters and disciplinarians than teachers."

Eliminating 206 teachers would mean classes would increase by three students, according to DPS projections. The average class size for grades K-8 is about 20 students, which is similar to the state average, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

School board members are considering a host of cost-cutting measures, including furloughs, pay cuts and reductions in using off-duty officers for security, and tapping groups like Teach for America to hire teachers.

Michael Oehler, who has a son in kindergarten and a daughter right behind him, thinks Durham needs a special school tax.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools has such a tax, he said. District property owners pay 18.84 cents per $100 of assessed tax value, so on a $200,000 home, a homeowner would pay about $377 on top of county and any town taxes.

Oehler recently started a blog, supportdurhamschools.blogspot.com/, to push his idea. He thinks Durham homeowners would support a 33-cent per $100 school tax, which on a $200,000 home would add $660.

"I think that's a no brainer," he said. "I think for too long school funding has been a third rail of the county-city merger. I think the time has come to start talking about how schools are funded in Durham and to talk about it openly."

School Board Chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown wouldn't say if the board would support such a tax, only saying the issue has yet to be discussed.

Board members are being proactive after being caught off guard by last year's local and state cuts.

"The state had never done that before," Forte-Brown said. "So we were really blindsided when we came back from spring break. We weren't prepared."

Schools are being asked what they can do without if their budgets were slashed up to 10 percent.

"We can't afford to cut anything," said Barbara Parker, principal at R.N. Harris Elementary School. "We've talked about combining positions but keeping those teachers aboard and letting them do different things."

Things such as combining dance and physical education or art and literacy have been discussed, Parker said.

The situation is no better at Durham School of the Arts, where talks revolve around cutting popular non-required classes such as A.P. psychology and whether the school can afford art and music supplies. Principal David Hawks said DSA could lose up to 15 teachers.

"We can't cut our arts program, otherwise we'll be the Durham school that used to have the arts," he said.