Gov. Gray Davis warned Friday that progress made in California's public schools over the past several years will be jeopardized if the Legislature does not pass his revised budget soon.

He urged school district officials and other educators at a round-table discussion at Broadway Elementary School in Venice to tell legislators they are unwilling to accept further cuts in education.

"This is a fight, it's very ideological, it's very partisan and in an appropriate way we need all of you to weigh in and let the folks know in Sacramento that you want an on-time budget and you want a budget that protects education," Davis said.

The constitutional deadline for adopting a state budget is Sunday, but it is rarely met. The fiscal year ends June 30 and the new one begins July 1. The last time around the budget was not signed until September.

Davis last month proposed a revised budget that reduced cuts in education to $1.5 billion from the initial $5 billion he proposed in January.

His revised budget calls for a half-cent sales tax increase over five years that would raise $2.3 billion a year to help close a $38.2 billion deficit.

Republicans have so far refused to vote for any tax increases, leaving the two parties in a deadlock and the state likely to remain without a budget by the Sunday deadline.

"We are not retreating from the progress that we've experienced in the last couple of years. We are not going to let 30,000 teachers lose their jobs and we're not going to abandon class-size reduction," Davis said.

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Roy Romer said the nation's second-largest school district would be in "a real crisis" that should not be underestimated if the budget is not passed on time.

The district gets 90 percent of its budget from Sacramento and will begin planning for the 2003-04 school year on July 1.

"I understand how you can get differences between parties and between the two houses, but there comes a time in which ... you've all got to quit the argument, get the bucket and start putting out the fire," Romer said.

He said Wall Street would not help California emerge from its budget crisis if it did not raise the revenues needed to support its budget.

"The fact that we can't get a budget delivered on time forces us to make the kinds of decisions that are going to start to impact student achievement, and we don't want that to happen," said Board of Education member Marlene Canter.

Davis said he was optimistic that he would be able to sign a budget by July 1.

"But I would like people working on this day in and day out because there are only a certain number of days between now and July 1 and we don't want to squander a single one of them," Davis said.