Tonight, the Roscommon Area Public Schools hosted a community forum at the high school, where they collected input for areas to cut in the upcoming budget year. We heard a pretty good (if brief) presentation about the funding sources (federal and state) that are being reduced, and how the combination of those reductions has surprised the district. We then met in small groups to discuss/group-think ideas that hadn't been mentioned yet. The final exercise involved giving each participant (I'm guessing around 200 people) a collection of 16 stickers, and inviting them to walk around the cafeteria, applying a sticker to large sheets of paper with budget items listed on them. If you applied a sticker to a topic, you were indicating that you supported cutting that item from the budget. I still have all my stickers; I struggled with this exercise. None of the possible budget cut items have a dollar amount accompanying them...so, does it save more money to cut the Forensics team, or the National Honor Society, or summer band camp, or MIddle School track? I have no idea. If I were doing this exercise at home, I would know that it might not help to cut a $7/month Netflix subscription when a $100/month cable bill is sitting there. Both provide entertainment value, but the only way I know to measure that value is to compare what it provides to what it costs. So, back to the task at hand. I need to know how much, for example, it costs to have a Quiz Bowl team. Then, how many kids does that program touch? As I understand it, those kinds of numbers aren't available...but that's the only way I've thought of to make those decisions as 'objective' as possible. Otherwise, it's just down to preference...what programs do board members agree they like more than others?Maybe I've been exposed to one-too-many process mapping exercises with the MSP...