Despite voter approval of a local tax increase, Durango School District 9-R is looking at further budget cuts. The state’s fiscal crisis is such that its spending cuts are more than local taxpayers can offset.

Those cuts will inevitably hurt. But at the same time, they present an opportunity to reinforce what matters and reassert our priorities. Done right, the result could be improved schools.

For what that might look like, District 9-R leaders should consider the thinking of New York Times columnist David Brooks (Herald, March 2). He outlined three principles to apply to school budget cuts. They make sense.

First, Brooks says, make everybody hurt. That is not to say cuts should be across the board. It is just that things like this work better if no one feels singled out.

Second, Brooks would “trim from the old to invest in the young.” Parents do that all the time, but his point is valid in that society is often guilty of the reverse.

Brooks’ third principle is to “never cut without an evaluation process.” And while 9-R is to be applauded for seeking public input, in the end, that remains the school board’s responsibility.

At a public meeting Tuesday night, District 9-R heard where parents and educators thought cuts could – or should not – be made. The No. 1 priority expressed was to keep class sizes small. Some of the other ideas, however, were both more imaginative and more practical.

All things being equal, smaller classes are, of course, desirable. But the appeal of the idea largely rests on its simplicity. For while class size is a metric we can all understand, it is not necessarily the most crucial.

Teacher quality is at least as important. Education Secretary Arne Duncan would put more students in the best teachers’ classes and pay those teachers more.

Then again, perhaps parents and the general public should focus on other areas. One intriguing idea advanced Tuesday was, as one attendee put it, to “get creative with the transportation system.”

And why not? It is bad enough that public schools are still tied to a 19th-century agricultural calendar. Why must they also operate bus companies?

Few parents are qualified to teach calculus or a foreign language, but almost all are quite adept at getting around the county. And in every other area of life, they are expected to get their kids where they need to be, too. Why not let the schools teach and let parents and the larger community worry about getting students to school?

That would not completely fulfill Brooks’ first principle in that it would burden some more than others, but there must be ways to compensate for that. Perhaps in-town families could pay a small fee that could help defer rural folks’ expenses. Businesses could help by allowing more flexible schedules for those transporting students. The school district could organize car pools or help with scheduling parents sharing driving duty. Maybe some legislative action could relieve 9-R of liability for pairing qualified volunteers with kids needing rides. Retirees might welcome that chance to contribute. And, as pointed out Tuesday, the Trolley could play a role.

Are there problems with cutting transportation? Of course. But it meets Brooks’ second and most important criteria: The cost and inconvenience would be borne by adults. It would not come out of classrooms.

In the end, it all ties to Brooks’ third point: Whatever is done must be thoroughly evaluated. The worst ideas are the easiest – to cut across the board, to start with teachers or to assume sports, art and music are luxuries instead of the critically important programs they are.

Choosing will be tough. Getting this right, however, will be worth the effort.