Our local school leaders have been investigating ways to cut costs, and some of those ways have been quite drastic. Some of those have been to ask teachers to remove refrigerators and microwaves from their rooms. They have even asked teachers to cut off as many lights as is practical in their classrooms.

These may seem crazy, but when your school system is expected to lose $4 million in funding this year, you are forced to do things that you wouldn’t normally think of. By reducing those other costs, school leadership is trying to keep as many jobs as they can in their school.

It might be unusual, but it’s better to cut off a few lights than to have a much higher student-teacher ratio because teachers were laid off.