In last Sunday and Monday's Ann Arbor News, former Board of Education trustee Brad Orr made a number of what he called "outside the box" suggestions for bringing the AAPS's budget deficit under control. His first article focused on short-term proposals [1]: 1) Don't open the new high school; 2) eliminate busing; 3) have elementary principals supervise two buildings; 4) freeze administration pay and eliminate Board of Education compensation. His second article proposed longer-term structural changes [2]: 1) open contract negotiations to the public and start from scratch with a new agreement, 2) outsource custodial, food service and administrative functions, and 3) move toward "building-based budgeting."

No matter what you think of the proposals, they should be prompting what I believe is a healthy discussion about what we can do in Ann Arbor to stop the bleeding and get our schools on a sound footing. We need to do this in a spirit of goodwill, and without pointing fingers. But we do need to do it.

Let's talk about this!