ATTLEBORO - At a time when city officials are trying to spur jobs and economic growth through a major revitalization plan, the city's top educator is arguing that improving schools should be seen as an integral part of the turnaround.

Superintendent Pia Durkin said upgrading educational programs and increasing academic progress among the city's 6,000 school children are indispensable to attracting new jobs and investment and encouraging families to settle or stay in the Jewelry City.

Durkin said schools are already falling behind their student achievement targets under the federal No Child Left Behind program with five of eight schools already on a federal watch list. Any further backsliding, she said, could ultimately result in state sanctions that might discourage families from sending pupils to public school and investors from bringing their business to the city.

"Schools are an integral part of revitalization," she said, adding that to secure the future the city's schools must be "strong and unsurpassed."

On the eve of a critical city council vote on a massive redevelopment plan, Durkin said the administration has presented a "reasonable and transparent" preliminary budget to the school committee which includes a 6.5 percent or $3.5 million increase. However the city's portion of state education aid is expected to increase by less than 10 percent of that amount.

Durkin, Mayor Kevin Dumas and city council President Barry LaCasse recently sent a letter to Gov. Deval Patrick urging him to support a change in the education funding formula that would give Attleboro a better deal.

Durkin's preliminary budget won praise from school committee members Monday night, although school board member Jane Larkin cautioned that in the light of minimal increases in state aid the school department can no longer guarantee an "automatic" 3 percent increase when it awards contracts.

"Our financial structure won't support that," she said.

School board member Frank D'Agostino called the budget request "beyond reasonable" and said he hoped Mayor Dumas would support it.

Durkin said the consequences of failing schools could be severe - not only for the education system and its pupils but for the city as a whole. The superintendent, who joined Mayor Dumas in meeting earlier this month with U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and mayors and school chiefs from Brockton, Lowell, Worcester and other Bay State cities, said communities where underperforming schools have been designated for corrective action by the state have been tagged with a "scarlet letter." She said officials in those communities talked about residents no longer wanting to send their children to those schools.

City councilor John Davis, a candidate for mayor, said he believes it is not unreasonable to link education with revitalization but said Attleboro is not in a unique position in struggling to fund its public schools.

"It's not just Attleboro," he said. "There are a lot of communities that aren't able to finance their educational system in the way that they'd like to."

Davis said gaining additional financial support from the state is the single biggest key to improved school financing and said he would "not be surprised" if the Patrick administration bows to pressure to make educational funding more equitable.