By Sharon Noguchi

After the Legislature opens a special session Monday to discuss how to close a $6 billion hole in the current state budget, schools are likely to endure another big mid-year blow. And then comes the really bad news: the need to reconcile a projected $19.5 billion shortfall for 2011-12, partly by cutting education.

Here's the likely result: "Schools will become more and more like prisons and less and less like schools," said David Plank, a professor of education at Stanford University. "You'll have huge classes, restive young people and overworked teachers."

Sound drastic? So is the budget crisis.

Soon after he is sworn in next month, Governor-elect Jerry Brown will have to present a budget for 2011-12, a year