Sitting around tables in the Lindbergh High School cafeteria, parents and concerned citizens carefully weighed what school programs should be saved and which cut.

The discussions Tuesday night were the second of three planned for the Renton School District’s Community Budget Meetings. The first one was held Monday night at Renton High School.

The next Community Budget Meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday (Jan. 27) at Hazen High School, 1101 Hoquiam Ave. N.E.

About 20 people showed up to give their input on what should be done in light of the additional $850,000 cut from this year’s school district budget and an estimated $2.4 million deficit they have in the 2011-2012 budget.

Michele Duppenthaler has a 6-year-old son who started this year at Cascade Elementary School. She came to the meeting because she’s concerned academics and the future of the children will be hurt. She says her son is learning a lot but wonders what’s ahead.

“But, it’s also nice he has a class size of 20 and I’d like to see that it stay that way, ’cause these teachers are dealing with a lot of issues in the classroom at 20 [students],” she said. “And if you had 30 students in there, it’s going to get more complex for them to try and deal with the kids with issues as well as teach the academics that are necessary.”

One of Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposed cuts is to eliminate funds intended to reduce class size in kindergarten through fourth grades.

Rich Moore, assistant superintendent of operations for the district, outlined the district’s priorities. They included pre-kindergarten through 12th grade literacy and math programs, equity and access programs for all students, to dramatically accelerate achievement through research-proven initiatives, support efforts for on-time graduation and college readiness, ensure safe and secure learning environments and maintain a school-board goal of 4 percent fund balance.

One of the parent/citizen groups talked about keeping the Discovery Program, a program for highly capable or gifted students. It also discussed the online credit recovery program, keeping class sizes down, the equity and access programs and cost of living adjustments for teachers.

Al Talley, president of Renton School Board, said the district has been cutting for the last four years and there’s not much left to cut.

“It’s tough,” he said. “We don’t want to get rid of anything because we feel that where we are now, I mean with a 93 percent graduation rate, I mean something is going right.”

Talley said the district will stack up the priorities given as input at the community meetings and look at the programs they want to keep, but he knows they can’t keep them all.