Close the schools.

If we are really in an economic crisis, close the schools.  Nothing is more wasteful than schools.  Ordinarilly, they are closed two months, have many other days off and short hours anyway. 

This would save lots of money.  Let's try it for a year.

A year off might be a nice break for students.  The main argument for keeping them open is the dirty little secret: they are the world's most inefficient baby sitters.  Wherever will parents dump their kids?

I would never have suggested this before the web but kids can learn a lot on their own simply by accessing the web, which is a lot less expensive than keeping those brick and mortar buildings occupied. Busing kids to buildings is really old thinking.