Crucial funding for pregnant and parenting teens will be re-examined for cuts after concerns were raised during a legislative committee hearing Monday in Austin.

All state agencies were told to cut budgets by 5 percent as Texas faces a shortfall of $10 billion to $20 billion going into the next session of the Legislature in 2011. The Texas Education Agency proposed $135.5 million in cuts last month that include reducing or eliminating various state grant programs.

TEA had recommended cutting about $10 million from the Life Skills Program for Student Parents, which pays for services for pregnant or parenting teens. TEA suggests that many dropout prevention services funded through that grant could be available through other means, such as federal Title I funds aimed at helping low-income students.

But educators working with such students mobilized and sent letters to legislators to say the funding is crucial to programs and one of the few resources that help students with day care.

"If there's not another place that the child-care funding can come from, we need to be very careful of that," said Rep. Geanie Morrison, R-Victoria. "To keep these children in school is very important, and it keeps them off of other rolls."

Adam Jones, TEA's chief operating officer, said the agency will reconsider cuts to the grant, as the Texas Workforce Commission has proposed reductions to its child-care subsidy programs that some students also use.

Nina Jackson, Fort Worth's director of adolescent pregnancy services, attended the hearings but did not testify. The district receives about $242,047 from the grant that helps provide child care at Polytechnic High School and the Center for New Lives, an alternative campus for pregnant or parenting teens. She also said it helps provide transportation and other services for such students.

Although districts use various funds to help students, this is the only dedicated state grant for pregnant and parenting students, and its loss would be dramatic, Jackson said. Finding other funds could be difficult, as many districts face budget cuts. The Fort Worth district recently declared a financial emergency for the second year in a row.

"There's no way we could absorb the loss of that amount of money," she said. "The bottom line is, we'd have kids dropping out if we lose that money."

Some on the committee were concerned about the largest proposed TEA cut -- $25 million in grants to help poor districts pay for science labs. Beginning with the Class of 2011, high school students must take four years of science, which has meant that some districts need to build more classrooms to accommodate it.

Adams said it is a cut officials would rather not make but that it has to be weighed against other pressing funding needs, such as programs for the state's deaf students.

TEA officials have said the future of any state grant is not certain even if the cuts are approved. Officials could ask for more funding in future legislative sessions for any programs that are affected.

EVA-MARIE AYALA, 817-390-7700