CRANSTON — Faced with a determined lobbying effort from parents, the School Committee spared a popular program for gifted students last night.

But committee members said they could not guarantee the program would survive the school district’s worst fiscal crisis in memory.

And as the committee’s meeting stretched into the night, the panel cut GED and adult education programs as part of a broader effort to trim at least $8 million from the budget plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

“This is the worst financial crisis I’ve ever seen in my 42 years of service to this city,” said School Committee Chairman Michael A. Traficante, who once served as mayor of Cranston.

With a key budget deadline approaching, the board is expected to meet again tomorrow night and make more reductions.

The committee must present a balanced budget proposal to Mayor Michael T. Napolitano by Saturday, March 1.

The mayor will present a full municipal budget, including an education figure, to the City Council by May 15.

The School Committee took a first stab at cuts from an initial spending proposal earlier this month, chopping $4.5 million.

The panel voted, during that first round, to forgo parking lot paving work, eliminate a special-education administrator, cut a human resources manager, chop three middle school assistant principal positions and press for pay freezes in coming labor negotiations.

Those cuts came at a sparsely attended meeting and engendered little public outcry.

But several dozen parents, aware that the committee was considering cuts to the gifted program, known as Enrichment Project in Cranston, or EPIC, turned out at last night’s meeting wearing white-and-red stickers emblazoned with the program’s acronym.

No pleading was required, though, as one committee member after another said at the outset of the meeting that they backed the program.

Suzanne O’Shea, a parent who helped organize a phone and e-mail campaign to preserve EPIC, said she felt “very proud” of the parents who rallied around the program and the committee members who protected it.

Still, the program could wind up on the chopping block again, given the depth of the district’s financial crisis.

Health care and utility costs are escalating. And an obscure change in the federal government’s policy for reimbursing school districts for medical costs is also taking a toll.

The state, meanwhile, is facing a projected $384-million shortfall of its own in the coming fiscal year, and education advocates are expecting no new aid for school districts from Smith Hill.

The city, the other primary funding source for the schools, is also facing tight times.

And with elections approaching this fall, the mayor and City Council seem less than eager to raise local property taxes.

School officials have expressed frustration at the city’s relative stinginess when it comes to schools.

Cranston dedicates 54 percent of its budget to the schools, the lowest percentage of any municipality in the West Bay.

But educators say their real gripe is with the state: city support of the schools jumped by $33 million between 1999 and 2007, according to district figures, while the state contribution increased by just $10 million during that period.

Whatever the factors in play, the School Committee has little choice but to cut. And school finance officials say $8 million is the minimum.

That projection will hold only if the City Council approves the maximum property tax hike allowed under state law and dedicates all the resulting revenue to the school.

The schools, which are gearing up to sue the city for $3.8 million more in education aid for the current fiscal year, would also have to win that legal fight and convince the city to pour a similar amount of cash into next year’s appropriation to stave off another lawsuit.

Without the tax hike and courtroom victory, the shortfall for next year would skyrocket to an estimated $16.5 million.

In the meantime, the cuts and budgetary adjustments mount. Last night, the School Committee voted to shift an alternative education program for students who struggle in mainstream high schools to the charter school it runs in conjunction with a laborers’ union.

The board also budgeted for some $700,000 it anticipates saving from a previously approved shift of city sixth-graders from middle schools to elementary schools this fall.

The committee had already approved cutting three assistant principals from the soon-to-be-shrunken middle schools, at a savings of $363,000.

dscharfe@projo.com