Her youngest has 33 students in his fourth-grade class at Apex Elementary.

"I don't see there's any more they can do," Coutant said. "I just hope they won't cut any more."

Jam-packed Wake County classrooms with up to 40 or more students have sparked a blame game between leaders of North Carolina's largest school district and state officials and educators.

Gov. Beverly Perdue, State Board of Education Chairman Bill Harrison and the N.C. Association of Educators say Wake school leaders shouldn't be blaming the state for budget cuts that have increased class sizes and resulted in fewer teachers and assistants.

Instead, they say Wake should have more aggressively used federal stimulus dollars to rehire teachers who could shrink class sizes now. Their message: Worry later about the stimulus dollars running out in two years.

"Why would you cut teachers and increase class sizes when you don't have to?" said Sheri Strickland, president of the N.C. Association of Educators. "Let's give the kids the best education we can."

But Wake school leaders say it would be "fiscally irresponsible" to rely too heavily on short-term stimulus dollars to pay for ongoing expenses such as teacher salaries. They say they can't count on the economy improving two years from now to replace the stimulus money when it runs out.

"Everything I'm hearing indicates that the recovery won't be as fast as the decline was," said Wake Superintendent Del Burns. "Revenues will continue to be a problem. From our point of view, striking that balance between recurring and nonrecurring dollars is fiscally responsible."

Heading into the start of this school year, which began late last month for traditional-calendar schools, Burns was warning that state budget cuts would hurt the classroom.

Wake, like many school districts, coped with the state funding cuts by raising class sizes in grades four through 12 and slashing teacher and teacher assistant positions.

Larger classes means fewer teachers are needed. And fewer teachers means fewer courses can be offered -- and classes in the surviving courses hold more students.

In Wake County, the state's largest district, nearly 600 of the 1,496 teachers and other school employees who weren't automatically rehired when their contracts expired June 30 haven't been brought back yet. More than 200 other teachers had to transfer to other schools if they wanted to keep working in Wake.

Carla Davis, who teaches math at Sanderson High School in North Raleigh, has up to 38 students in one class. Last year, most of her classes ranged in the 20s."This isn't college. We're building solid foundations here. But that's hard to do when you have so many students," she said.

With fewer teachers, Sanderson High Principal Greg Decker said he had to focus his thinner resources on required courses. That means fewer advanced courses, a cut that drew complaints from parents, and the elimination of programs allowing students to attend class on Saturday or after school to get caught up on courses they had failed.

"I'm concerned about the loss of support I can provide my students," Decker said.

Schools are to begin getting relief this week, when teachers begin shifting between schools based on their enrollment. But because of the tight budget, it's uncertain how much class sizes will be reduced.

"It's fair to say that class sizes will be larger than last year," Burns said. "How much so? It's too soon to say."

Pointing to Forsyth

With Wake school officials saying the state budget cuts have left them no choice, the state's education establishment is fighting back. They're pointing to how some school districts are using stimulus dollars to offset state cuts.

Wake is using some of the $46.4 million in stimulus money over the next two years to save 100 jobs. But it's using much of it to create 98 positions at Title I schools, including math coaches to work with teachers and more pre-kindergarten classes.

"[Burns is] making the best decision he thinks he can for Wake County schools," said Harrison, former superintendent of Cumberland County schools. "Having been in that position before, if I was superintendent, I would use the money for job preservation. That's the option I would have taken."

But Burns questioned relying on stimulus dollars to save jobs when they're worried that the state might not be able to replace the $35 million in stimulus dollars it's now using to offset other cuts to Wake.