Democrats aren’t likely to pay much attention to the  midyear budget cuts and ideas for closing a $25 billion deficit that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to offer today.

But it’s a safe bet that one of Schwarzenegger’s likely proposals to cut K-12 schools will resurface in January, when Gov.-elect Jerry Brown inherits the mess. That’s $1.7 billion – about $275 per child – that Schwarzenegger didn’t want schools to get in the first place.

After he included the cut in his revised budget in May, education groups raised holy hell, so Democrats restored the money in the budget they passed in October so they could say that schools got about the same money as last year.

Sort of.

They added the amount to the growing total of money deferred ­– dollars that schools are owed but won’t see until the next fiscal year – in this case, July 2011. Smart superintendents and school boards have assumed the Legislature  wouldn’t deliver the money, and they’ll be proven right.

Add to that the $2 billion less in Proposition 98 money that the state will be obligated to fund next year, and schools can expect at least a cut of about $600 per student. The expiration of temporary taxes – on vehicles, income and sales — over the next year will mean less revenue for the state, and that translates into less Prop 98 for the schools. But this reduction already has been factored into the projected $19 billion deficit for next year, so any more  cuts  to education to balance next year’s budget will be additional.

That’s a point that Brown should make, to put school funding in a bigger context, in the budget summit he will hold for legislators – and the public — on Wednesday in Sacramento.

Other points:

From its high point in 2007-08, Prop 98 funding has already been cut $6.6 billion or 13 percent – and will rise to  $8.5 billion or 17 percent, with the additional $2 billion cut next year. (This doesn’t include money owed schools for student growth and inflation.)

The first 20 percent of money districts and community colleges will receive – about $8 billion – will repay them for money owed to them from the previous year. Deferred money is causing  additional financial strain on districts, which have to borrow money to tide them over. Interest rates are low now, but once they start to rise, districts will bear larger charges, leaving less money for the classroom.

Then there’s the question of how much longer Sacramento will be able to solve its problems through IOUs to the schools and others who provide state services before Wall Street takes notice – a point raised in a lead article in the New York Times on the coming financial crisis for states and local governments. As school consultant Kevin Gordon, the president of School Innovations and Advocacy, observed at a California School Boards Assn. panel discussion on Saturday, “The craziness will stop when bankers stop loaning money to the schools.”