City principals will receive tentative budgets tonight, and the city’s highest-performing high schools, including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Townsend Harris, are expected to receive the biggest cuts, with some as high as $600,000.

But the Department of Education is saying it hopes the cuts are just temporary.

To relieve what he called the “pain” the cuts would inflict, the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, yesterday said he is seeking help from state lawmakers. If the state agrees to loosen restrictions on a pot of money that is supposed to go only to high-need, low-performing schools, Mr. Klein said he can minimize cuts to just 1.4% at every school.

The plan is already meeting strong opposition.

Groups with significant sway in Albany, the teachers union and the principals union, decried the idea yesterday.

So did Governor Paterson, who would have to approve such a change through legislation.

“The lack of flexibility in state funding reflects the state’s policy that Contract for Excellence funding should go disproportionately to schools with the greatest needs,” a spokesman for Mr. Paterson, Errol Cockfield, said. “If the city were not reducing its own promised spending for schools, it would have sufficient money to balance funds for other schools if it chose to do so.”