Part of the nearly 30-member student contingent from PS 24 in the Bronx display protest signs outside City Hall on Wednesday.
The message is the same, only the messengers are smaller.
Following months of demonstrations by parents, teachers and elected officials, children are now taking to the steps of Tweed Courthouse day after day to protest school budget cuts.
Young students are also taking part in letter-writing campaigns to demand education officials abandon plans to slice $99 million from schools next year.
The demonstrations have taken on a desperate tone in recent days as the City Council's late June deadline for approving the budget draws closer.
About 30 first-graders traveled from Public School 24 in the Bronx Wednesday morning to protest the nearly $260,000 cut planned for their school.
"I love PS 24 just the way it is," said 6-year-old Eytan Stanton. "I do not want us to have less of anything."
This week, 65 third-graders from PS 87 on the upper West Side received a personal response to the giant envelope of letters they mailed to schools Chancellor Joel Klein in May.
The chancellor met with three classes in the school's library to field questions about the budget reduction, which is part of citywide belt-tightening.
"They were very concerned about the well-being of their school," said Cynthia Wachtell, a parent who attended the meeting. "There were no easy questions."
Last week, students from the Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn delivered protest letters, as did students from Manhattan's PS 75 and Stuyvesant High School.
Parents and students from the Hudson Cliffs middle school in the Bronx protested yesterday outside their school.
Education officials said they were listening to the students' complaints.
"I wouldn't put first-graders out there, especially when they should be in school, but we recognize the extent of concern in school communities around the budget," said Education Department press secretary David Cantor.
"We're working to get flexibility from the state to ensure that no school suffers from more than the smallest possible reduction."
