[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

More than 200 education jobs cut, including 150 teachers and 23 vice principals. Class sizes would balloon. Art and music classes would be erased.

The budget proposed by the school board in Paterson, the third largest city in New Jersey, offered a staggering package of cuts. Officials said they have no choice but to make the cuts that stand to undo years of gains by the long-struggling school district.

The board’s recent vote has plunged this economically distressed city into a wrenching debate about how its schools are funded, who controls the education of its nearly 29,000 public school children and what it will finally take to lift Paterson — a once-thriving industrial center — from its bleak past.

“The upsetting thing about it is the district was in a rebound,’’ said Rosie Grant, the executive director of the Paterson Education Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. “They have put in early reading programs, math programs, different interventions, and we were seeing some results from that.