A four-day work week during the summer. Experimentation with online course offerings. Nixing school board members' pay.
Those and other cost-saving measures are being enacted by school districts across the region, so the brunt of state budget cuts don't impact students.
School administrators already dealing with a nearly $300 million cut in state funding say they're anticipating another round of cuts possibly by December.
To prepare, school districts are combing through their budgets to prevent devastating cuts to teaching positions and programs. The school system's newsletter made the chopping block in East Porter County Schools, and several districts are offering early retirement options to prevent layoffs.
"We are looking at everything exceptionally carefully," said Rod Gardin, East Porter superintendent. "Not down to the dollar, but we're looking at every expenditure and every purchase order and questioning if we really need this. If we don't, we don't buy it."
For this school year, River Forest Community School Corp. used reserves saved from its health insurance plan to help shore up a $528,000 budget shortfall. Those savings, in part, prevented a reduction-in-force of the district's teaching staff, according to River Forest Superintendent James Rice.
River Forest also has a transfer policy in which parents can opt to pay tuition for students to attend the 1,569-student school district, and those numbers also are increasing.
"More and more people around the community are saying, 'We would like to send our kids to the schools,'" Rice said. "We're growing in small amounts every year. We aren't declining and that's helped us, too."
Griffith Public Schools board members no longer receive a stipend for their service, and the school district will operate on a four-day work week during the summer in an effort to save on energy costs.
"This was the year to do it because we know we'll save energy," said Jeannette Bapst, Griffith's business manager.
Porter Township Schools piloted an online school day program in its high school last year, and next school year the district's middle and high school students will spend eight days participating in online-based learning from home.
While the program originally wasn't instituted to save money, but to give students experience in online learning, it will save the district money because buses won't run those days, according to Porter Township Superintendent Nick Brown.
Teachers are required to be available to answer students' questions on assignments, and computer labs are open for students who don't have access to computers at home.
Eventually the program will expand to the district's elementary schools.
"When we surveyed students after the first day, they said assignments were more rigorous than what they have during a regular school day," Brown said. "(Teachers) really were making sure it was quite rigorous, and we're impressed on how students did."
The district also outsourced and is sharing its technology department with Boone Township Schools, which saves around $75,000 a year. They're also installing hand dryers in bathrooms because those are funded through capital dollars and not out of its general fund.
"A small district of our size usually doesn't run with a lot of extras," Brown said. "Everyone is trying to look at ways to reduce their budget."