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It's a hard pill to swallow: budgets tightening for public school districts across the country and school officials dealing with the unpleasant task of painfully determining what stays and what must go. However, many school districts are getting creative with their efforts to make ends meet, and some are finding ways to trim the budget without sacrificing the quality of education to do so. Others are not so lucky, as job eliminations are forcing larger class sizes and fewer extracurricular programs. We'll examine some of the ways public schools are finding ways to make ends meet in the wake of severe budget cuts across the country.

Restructuring Continuing in Detroit

No one understands the impact of budget cuts better than the Detroit Public Schools district, which has been hit hard, as the economy in the area is one of the slowest in the country. The district is currently in the midst of a consolidation and closure plan that is attempting to align open schools and available services with student needs. According to an article at , the moves are designed to cut operating costs without sacrificing services or facilities for the students that need them most.

Roy S. Roberts, emergency manager for the school district, told Click on Detroit, "There continues to be overcapacity for the number of students that we serve despite the closings that have occurred, and while the moves we are announcing today bring DPS more in line

It is a high school student's worst nightmare: to have the secondary school he or she attends lose accreditation, directly impacting the student's ability to obtain scholarships or even get admitted to the college of his choice. However, that is exactly the situation facing students and parents in Atlanta Public Schools, where an educational standards agency has placed the entire school district on probation and in danger of losing its accreditation before the end of 2011. We will take a look at just how Atlanta ended up in this situation, and what the school board plans to do to survive the probationary period and come out of it with their accreditation still intact.

Reason for Investigation

The accrediting agency AdvancED was notified of potential problems in the Atlanta school district last year, when bickering among school board members became a matter of public concern. AdvancED scheduled an onsite visit in December to review board documents and make necessary recommendations. At that visit, the accrediting agency found the Atlanta school system's board has failed to meet standards on governance and leadership, according to a report by the Associated Press at .

CEO of AdvancED, Mark Elgart, said at a news conference, "The reason for probation is the issues are serious. They not only affect the effective governance of the board but they affect the future direction of the school system and its ability to provide a quality education for all students." A report in

Detroit Public Schools are facing a serious financial crisis – and very limited options for digging their way out of the monetary hole. The District's emergency financial planner, Robert Bobb, has three possible options in front of him to solve at least some of the district's financial woes. However, none of the choices are particularly attractive, and all would require severe sacrifices by students, parents and staff to make them work. We'll take a look at the choices here as we examine how Detroit plans to muddle through large amounts of debt and revenue shortfalls in the midst of one of the toughest economic crises to hit the city in decades.

Steeped in Debt

According to a report at , Detroit Public Schools currently face $327 million in debt with no visible means of repayment at this time. While bankruptcy is a viable option for Detroit, the district's debt insurer, Assured Guaranty Ltd., wants the state legislature to add a no-bankruptcy agreement before the schools can take out any more short-term debt. Without the agreement, the insurer has threatened to accelerate long-term debt payments, raising the annual payment amount from $21 million to $45 million. The schools, which cannot afford this option, have been forced to look at other solutions to their financial crisis as a result.

"They're basically holding a gun to our heads," Robb told Bloomberg.

If the schools agree to the no-bankruptcy clause, Assured is willing to continue working

Children who read textbooks in school usually make an assumption that the "facts" presented in those books are accurate and verified. However, a recent flap over a particular textbook used in Virginia schools demonstrates that even reading materials in classrooms can be seriously flawed. The inaccurate textbook has since been pulled from Virginia classrooms, but questions still remain over how the textbooks entered the schools in the first place, and why they were widely used before the errors were reported and the books were removed.

Teachable Moments?

"Our Virginia: Past and Present" is a textbook published by Five Ponds Press and used by fourth-grade classrooms across the state of Virginia. In October of last year, it was discovered that this book contained some erroneous errors. Loudoun County was one of the first to find a mistake – the description of non-existent battalions of Black confederate soldiers – according to a report in the by Robert McCartney. County staff studied the book further and found as many as 12 errors. However, the county placed the books back on classroom shelves and instructed teachers to use the errors to demonstrate to students that they should be skeptical of what they read.

"It's a teachable moment," Loudoun school district spokesman Wayne Byard told the Post. He said by keeping textbooks in the classrooms, kids learn that "everybody tries their best but sometimes they don't research enough. You can't rely on a single source. You can't

Washington, D.C., is home to some of the poorest areas of the country, and the problem has been exacerbated in recent months due to rising unemployment and poverty levels. Unfortunately, some of the most tragic victims of poverty are children who are left without three stable meals a day because their parents simply don't have the necessary income to put food on the table. To help combat some of those dire results of poverty, public schools in Washington D.C. are now offering dinner to needy children, bringing the total number of square meals these children receive from the public school district to three a day.

Prevalence of Poverty

According to a recent report in the , over 6,000 D.C. residents fell below the poverty line between 2008 and 2009. A adds that the poverty rate for African American children in the city is about 43%, which is up from 31% in 2007 and much higher than the national average. These children often go without meals, leaving them ill-equipped for the rigors of school and greatly hindering their ability to learn.

This video describes the free lunch program in schools nationwide. Today, more than 30 million schoolchildren benefit from the National School Lunch Act, which was signed by President Truman in 1946. For many students, it may be the only nutritional meal they get - and some kids are still being denied a hot meal because their parents can't afford it.