April 13, 1984

President Reagan was warned by home builders and bankers today that ''time is running out'' for dealing with the high Federal deficit and preventing a downturn of the business recovery. The President, while promising to work on the problem, said there was no direct tie between the large deficit and high interest rates. He said the larger problem was a baseless ''pessimism'' that the economic recovery might falter. 'A Pessimism Out There' Proof of this, he told a panel of builders and bankers who questioned him here, was the fact that while the prime interest rate fell in his Administration from 21.5 percent to 11 percent, ''our deficit was doubling.''

City school officials have made no significant progress in preventing students from dropping out of school, according to a Board of Education draft report for the last school year. The study found that 11.9 percent of the students in the city's high schools left the system in the 1982-83 school year. Projecting that over four years, the study estimated that 40 to 43 percent of that year's ninth graders would not be in school in the spring of 1986, when they would have been seniors. The figure for the year before was 45 percent, a difference the report calls ''not significant.'' The board's figures have remained fairly constant over the last six years.

THERE can be little doubt now about Malcolm Morley's importance. As much as any painter of his generation, he has been following the path of the most resistance. During the last few years, his canvases have been rings in which he, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art and assorted modernist heavyweights have been hammering away at one another. Morley has helped preserve the urgency of one of the Abstract Expressionist questions: How is it possible for an artist to enlist in the just wars of 20th-century art and still produce painting of conviction and ambition? One of the problems with Morley's past work was that the conflicting forces in it could hammer away at one another to the point where paintings seemed slightly punchdrunk. A work that might at first seem wild, effusive and instinctive could wind up too stunned by the blow of Conceptual Art to be able to find its own corner. A painting that seemed an expression of Morley's robust sensuality could wind up almost bleak in its self-denial and abnegation. While Morley's method became increasingly influential, some work that resulted from that method seemed not so much generative as self-destructive and perverse.

ELEANOR BLAU EGGS will roll, fly and be in the way tomorrow and Sunday at the Bronx Zoo, which is serving up its fourth Great Egg Event. Children and grownups are invited to the festival, which has identical programs both days from 11 A.M. to 3:45 P.M. New this year will be morris dancers and a mime and dance group that calls itself Pandemonium and the Dragon Fly. As before, the climax each day will be a pageant with a giant chrysalis and a parade that everybody can join.

AS the most dramatic period of the Christian church year, the eight days from Palm Sunday through Easter, commemorate an astonishing sequence of events. The quick succession of moods - the hopefulness of Palm Sunday, the tragedy and despair of the Crucifixion on Good Friday and the triumph and wonder of the Resurrection on Easter - these have been reflected in some of the most inspired music in history. It is music that can be found this weekend and all next week in New York churches and concert halls. One of the most ambitious presentations can be heard tomorrow night at 8 as a prelude to Holy Week. This is a performance of Parts II and III of Handel's ''Messiah'' at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, 319 East 74th Street. Dino Anagnost, the conductor of the Metropolitan Singers-Greek Choral Society and the Little Orchestra Society, will lead his ensembles and soloists in this most popular of oratorios. Although it is traditionally given at Christmastide, ''Messiah'' devotes the last two of its three sections to the themes of Holy Week. As Mr. Anagnost says, ''It is more appropriate to this season than to Christmas.''