At a briefing Wednesday to inform education leaders of the bad news to come, Finance Director Tom Campbell informed them that the Schwarzenegger administration would not be able to abide by the funding promises it had made last year.

To the schools, it represented at least $2.2 billion worth of bad and genuinely unexpected news.

To deal with it, some turned to gallows humor. One remarked as they left the room, "He blew up the wrong box — the one with kids in it."

An education lobbyist called me today to report this "headline" for tomorrow's papers: "Kindergarten Cop shoots kids."

When the public fight comes over the proposed budget cuts, the rhetoric is not likely to be so dark. But it is an indication of just how vigorously the education community intends to fight the governor in the months ahead...