About a month after the governor proposed taking $2 billion from schools to help balance the budget, California's legislative analyst's office said Wednesday that lawmakers should consider pulling more money from the education budget to put the state in the black.

In a critique of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget, Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill recommended that lawmakers consider spending less on education than the governor proposed. Instead, the analyst suggested that lawmakers should spend as much or as little on education as they see fit.

"The Legislature should just spend at the level ... it deems appropriate," reads the report from Hill, whose office is charged with taking a hard, nonpartisan look at the state budget.

Hill also recommended that lawmakers wipe out a $966 million IOU that California owes schools from years of under-funding.

Doing so, according to the report, would help the state pull itself out of a projected $12 billion debt.

State educators balked at the report, saying schools must be protected from more cuts in projected spending to protect the integrity of the public education system.

A voter-approved constitutional amendment known as Proposition 98 was designed to protect school spending with a number of strict funding rules. Under that amendment, schools would have received $4 billion more this year than last year. But in January, education groups and Schwarzenegger agreed to support a temporary suspension of those rules so that schools would get about half that expected increase, just enough to keep up with projected enrollment increases.

Educators want the Legislature to honor that deal instead of taking the analyst's suggestions.

"I strongly disagree with the recommendation to consider cuts to Prop. 98 beyond the $2 billion agreed upon by the governor and the education community," State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said Wednesday in response to the analyst's report.

"The voters of our state amended our constitution specifically to provide increased investment in our schools when times are good and to protect this investment during times of budget crises," he added. "We should not shift more of the burden of balancing our budget to the backs of our students."

Taking an additional $1 billion from the education budget and giving the Legislature free rein over school spending would probably force districts to lay off workers and cut money for things such as textbooks and teachers, said Mike Weimer, a legislative representative for a union called the California Federation of Teachers.

"Schools, staff, supplies will all suffer if cuts like that go through in one year," Weimer said.

Local education officials said they were worried but not surprised at suggestions to take more money from education.

"Of course we pay close attention because you're talking about programs and class size and things we don't want to cut," said Dave Long, the superintendent of the Riverside County Office of Education. "But this is how the game is played. ... The governor strikes a deal, the analyst comes out with something else, and what gets put into law ends up not looking like either of those plans."

San Diego County Office of Education budget director Lora Duzyk agreed.

"I'd hope the governor wouldn't back out on his deal with the education community," Duzyk said. "But the fact is it was just a deal with the governor. There's still the Legislature, and they are the ones that vote on a budget."

Hill also recommended slight decreases in proposed student fees for the California State University and University of California systems and keeping some money for college outreach programs that Schwarzenegger proposed the Legislature cut.