Palo Alto and Gunn high schools will each have about $25,000 less to spend next school year on classroom essentials, such as copper sulfate for chemistry experiments, acrylic paint for art projects and paper for exams in all the other classes.

Both principals predict students won't feel the pinch -- because their parents' pocketbooks probably will. The high schools want parents to help cover classroom costs as the district struggles to cut back.

The new hope for a handout will overlap with other fund drives to offset the school district's deficit for the 2004-05 school year. When Palo Alto Unified this week unveiled 19 ways to reduce half of the budget gap, it also underscored the importance of raising $1.5 million in community contributions to fix the rest of its financial hole.

Like cash-strapped school districts across the state, Palo Alto Unified again is turning to fundraising to cope.

Palo Alto High Principal Sandra Pearson plans to ask the Parent Teacher Student Association to offset the $24,000 in cuts for supplies -- which breaks down to $15 a student. That's what the PTSA did this school year after the district shrunk spending per high school students by $6.

``Our parents are very generous,'' Pearson said. ``I believe they would do that.''

Still, she added, ``There's certainly a worry that there is only so many times one can go to the well, and there's only so much in the well.''

The district is reducing its $105 million budget and depending on new revenue because its projected property-tax growth plummeted and employees' benefits costs climbed.

But even before that, parents were asked for even more money this year as the Parent Teacher Association and the newly formed All Schools Fund tried to maintain the programs, perks and supplemental staff paid for in the past by donations. Some elementary school parents were asked for $500 a student.

Barbara Sih Klausner, who has a daughter at Nixon Elementary and two teens at Gunn, said the high school's science teachers sent a letter asking for a $50 donation for supplies.

``We get letters every year'' from the science department, Klausner said. ``And from the math department. And the Spanish department.''

More letters may be in the mail because of the three recommendations for reducing costs at the high schools:

• Spend $80 on each student, instead of the $95 per-pupil allotment; saving $50,739;

• Eliminate an assistant principal position at each high school, saving a total of $219,824;

• Cut five courses at each high school, saving a combined $143,482. Principals hope to offer the same variety of courses, but some classes may have additional students.

Gunn Principal Scott Laurence said his school can absorb some cuts by being more efficient. For example, five new computers funded by a PTSA donation will speed the time spent photocopying stacks of class handouts -- something a technician was paid $35,000 to do until last year.

``We can go to our parent communities for some of the things that we do,'' such as the twice-yearly diversity-awareness camp, Laurence said. ``There are always ways you can pick up $5,000 here, $10,000 there.''

Klausner, who also teaches math part time at Nixon and serves on the school's site council, said she is willing to donate more because she knows the district ``doesn't have a lot of fat'' to cut.

``If you're telling me right now that Palo Alto says we don't have enough money and we need the money and it will affect your kids, I don't have any problem giving whatever it is, a few hundred dollars per child per school,'' she said. ``At least I know all that money is going back to Gunn High School, where my children go to school, and that it's going for materials that they need.''