Here's a problem for the economists in the audience

Let's say you're the chief foreperson at a factory that makes, oh, I don't know, widgets. (Stop me if you've heard this before.)

Now, this widget factory is different from all those widget factories you ran in Econ 101. See, your customers get these widgets for free. All of the money that it takes to make the widgets comes from an investor, who gets his own reward later based on the success of your widgets. I told you it was complicated. Well, no, I didn't, but you should have guessed.

Anyway, for you, the cost of making widgets keeps going up. You know, materials get more expensive. Your workers--who, by the way, are required by law to be more highly qualified than most workers--want more money or they'll leave for more lucrative careers in advertising or, perhaps, waitressing. To top it off, you are also required to make more widgets every year, and the quality of your widgets must continue to increase, as measured by exacting government standards administered by the Department of Widgets.

Here's the rub: Your investor, a decade ago, made you a deal. You were not allowed to seek outside funds to help defray the cost of making your widgets, and this investor would provide you with a set, predictable set of funds annually to support your work. And that worked out okay, up until two years ago, when you found that the investor--because of some trouble he had with his finances--reneged on the deal, and cut your funds for each of the last two years. The investor did not give you leave to raise extra funds, and he did not cut you any slack on either the number or quality of your widgets. But the investor promised you that he would get back up to the promised rate of funding again as soon he got his financial house back in order.

So this summer, with that financial house back in order, you fully expected your investor to get your funds back to where they should be--where you need them to be in order to maintain your widget production. Except, not. Turns out your investor is going to short you again, for the next two years.

So what do you do? You have costs of production outpacing your income from the investor. You have to increase production levels and quality without additional funds and limited opportunities to find eficiencies or cut costs elsewhere. What is there to be done?

See, I want to know, really, I need to know, given that this is exactly what Wisconsin public schools are facing. Any help?