After emotional pleas from parents and children, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board held off Tuesday on dramatic cuts to the Bright Beginnings prekindergarten program.

The board voted to eliminate 134 teachers assigned to help impoverished students and to change school hours to save money on busing. And Bright Beginnings will still face the prospect of $10.4 million in cuts on Feb. 8.

"I don't have another answer right now," Superintendent Peter Gorman said, telling the board he's willing to spend another two weeks looking for alternatives. "Best thinking now, I haven't heard other options."

The board voted 8-0 for the delay. Joe White was absent.

Tuesday's votes are the second wave of painful cuts that began with approval of school closings in the fall. Months more of debate and cuts, including the possibility of losing hundreds more teachers and other employees, still loom.

The board voted 6-2 to change the formula for extra teachers based on poverty, and 7-1 to shuffle school schedules in a bid to save $4 million on busing costs. Most schools will have new start and dismissal times next year, and elementary students will spend an extra 45 minutes in class a day.

Dozens of parents and children spoke to the board, most focused on proposed cuts to the Bright Beginnings pre-K program for 4-year-olds who lack skills they'll need for kindergarten.

Gorman has proposed cutting enrollment from 3,200 this year to 1,178 next year, closing all five prekindergarten centers and eliminating pre-K classrooms from elementary schools that don't have poverty levels of at least 75 percent.

The plan would trim $10.4 million, including a little more than $2million in county money. The rest is federal stimulus money that ends this year. To preserve the full program, CMS would have to find about $8 million in new money to close that gap.

Advocates for young children, as well as parents, emphasized the long-term cost of letting children fall behind.

"A rushed decision to try to save money now will end up costing us a lot more later," said Barbara Cantisano, who runs two preschool programs for low-income Hispanic children. She said existing programs cannot fill the gap if 2,000 students lose Bright Beginnings seats.

Parents and young children made emotional pleas. Kelly Stevens told of the pain of her long history of academic failure and begged the board not to let that happen to children: "Charlotte, North Carolina, owes it to those children to help them. This is not a handout."

Nicole Dunn brought one of her 4-year-old twins to the podium as she spoke about how Bright Beginnings has helped her son, who gets speech therapy at Double Oaks prekindergarten center, which would close under Gorman's plan: "He's reading. He's confident. He speaks to both children and adults."

On the change in school hours, known as bell schedules, Kaye McGarry was the only dissenting vote.

The new schedules are staggered to let buses make more morning and afternoon runs. Elementary-school students will have seven hours of class per day. Teachers will get no extra pay; the added time is expected to come from their planning time.

That change got few comments. One parent called Gorman's plan "wonderful," while another asked the board not to make young children stay in school longer.

"I need time with my kids. They need time to socialize," said Michelle Brachten, who has children at Torrence Creek Elementary.

By tinkering with the formula for aid to students of poverty, Gorman expects to eliminate about 134 teachers and save almost $8 million. CMS will still spend $40 million to pay an extra 670 teachers.

Joyce Waddell and Tom Tate voted against that cut.

Under the current formula, each student who qualifies for low-income lunch aid is multiplied by 1.3 in assigning teachers. That means if the state provides one teacher per 25 students (actual ratios vary by grade level), CMS would provide an additional teacher for each 83 low-income students at a school. Currently, CMS adds 800 teachers district wide based on that formula.

The new formula would multiply by 1.25, which means it would take 100 low-income students to get the additional teacher.

Under both formulas, high-poverty schools get the most aid, but even schools with relatively low poverty levels get some additional faculty.

Earlier this month, Gorman laid out a plan to cut $100 million from CMS' $1 billion-plus budget. It eliminates just over 1,500 jobs, including more than 600 teachers.

Most of that plan will be fleshed out later, with the board voting in May.

Gorman's priority list puts the extra teachers based on poverty levels high on the list of items to save if the budget picture improves. Board members said the ranking he gave Bright Beginnings means there's no realistic chance that will be revived.