Getty Images/David McNew

Gov. Schwarzenegger attends an assembly of students at Dorsey High School on Sept. 17, 2009 in Los Angeles

San Francisco superintendent Carlos Garcia joined Bay Area teachers unions and the state’s PTA on Thursday to throw support behind the California state Assembly’s budget proposal while sharply rebuking Republicans in Sacramento.

The state Legislature remains mired in a stalemate over the new budget, now two weeks overdue. The Senate and Assembly, both led by Democrats, are struggling to reconcile competing proposals to close a $19.1 billion deficit, while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has also proposed his own set of sharp reductions to welfare programs and education spending.

Teachers’ representatives from Oakland, San Francisco, Redwood City and Alameda lashed out at Schwarzenegger on Tuesday at a press conference in San Francisco, saying that his spending plan would cut general purpose support for schools by $1.5 billion — equaling some $250 per student — and add further strain to a school system already stretched to the limit.

At the least, “the Assembly budget shows some light,” said Linda Plack, the vice president of the United Educators of San Francisco. “It gives education a standing eight count.”

Calling the Assembly budget “very, very beneficial to public education,” Assemblyman Tom Ammiano said by telephone on Thursday that negotiators from both houses of the Legislature have reached an agreement on how to absorb roughly $11 billion of the $19.1 billion in needed trims.

“We still have to finish negotiating with the Senate and then the governor,” said Ammiano. “The devil is in the details.”

The teachers, along with Debbie Look, a representative of the California State PTA, declined to publicly state any specific suggestions for how the state could generate additional revenue. (Democratic legislators in Sacramento have proposed taxes on offshore oil drilling as well as an added fee on soft drink containers.)

Yet they criticized Republican legislators and Schwarzenegger for pledging to refuse any budget proposal that would include tax increases.

“People are interested in being re-elected,” said Betty Olson-Jones of the Oakland teachers union, “but we’re calling on them to do what they were elected to do and not sacrifice our children.”

In Alameda, the situation looks particularly dire after the school district suffered a devastating loss at the ballot in June, when Measure E, a $14 million a year parcel tax initiative, garnered more than 65 percent of the vote but narrowly failed to win a two-thirds majority.

Class sizes at the Alameda Unified School District have jumped significantly — at the kindergarten level, for instance, from 25 to 32 — after the district laid off almost 100 permanent teachers in May. If a new attempt at a parcel tax does not succeed within the next year, Alameda officials say the school district will have to drastically consolidate its 16 schools into just six sites.

“People were in denial,” said Patricia Sanders, the head of the teachers union in Alameda, who also teaches mathematics at Lincoln High School. “Even our members, as they were being laid off, didn’t realize how far public education has been dismantled.”

Garcia, the outspoken superintendent in San Francisco, urged legislators to push back against proposals put forward by Schwarzenegger, who was found in a poll this week to have the lowest popularity level of any California governor in half a century.

“When you have a governor with only a 22 percent approval rating, I guess I question whether we should follow that governor,” said Garcia. “He’s a lame duck.”