SACRAMENTO — Education groups said Monday that California school districts, facing bleak and uncertain budget prospects, may not know until the very last minute how many teachers, counselors and other employees they will be able to hire for the coming school year.

In any event, it will be fewer than they had before.

In March, districts statewide sent layoff notices to about 14,000 teachers. Typically, many of those notices are rescinded after the governor submits his revised budget proposal in May.

"That's not happening this year," said Lynne Faulks, chief lobbyist for the California Teachers Association. "There's so much uncertainty out there in the districts."

As a result, she said, very few of those layoff notices have been rescinded, and thousands of teachers will clear out their classrooms this month not knowing whether they will return in September.

Sunday is the constitutional deadline for the Legislature to pass a budget bill but, as typically happens, the deadline will not be met.

Most observers predict a budget will not be passed this year until Aug. 1, at the earliest.

Rick Pratt, assistant executive director of the California School Boards Association, said schools face cuts in their workload budgets under any of the spending plans put forth so far, either Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal or those approved by the Assembly and Senate budget subcommittees.

All three proposals would allocate to school districts the minimum amount required by the Proposition 98 school-funding guarantee, but the Assembly and Senate amounts are higher because each assumes new revenues that Schwarzenegger has not proposed.

Proposition 98 funding under the proposals, which includes money for community colleges, is $56.8 billion under the Schwarzenegger plan, $59 billion under the Assembly plan and $59.8 billion under the Senate plan.

"We don't know what next fall will look like," Pratt said. "Until we see some revenues voted on and signed, I don't think that districts will have any certainty."

Pratt noted that although Schwarzenegger backed off his January proposal to suspend the Proposition 98 guarantee, schools would still have a loss of $1 billion in one-time funding they received this year and an additional $3 billion loss because of cuts in categorical programs and the suspension of any cost-of-living increase.

"That is a real, year-to-year reduction," he said.

Pat Dingsdale, director of legislation for the California PTA, said she has not seen parents "so upset and so agitated" since an initiative was placed on the 1993 ballot to implement a school-voucher program.

"There's not enough wrapping paper or bake sales to make up for this loss of revenue," she said.