At least two local school districts — DeWitt and East Lansing — have mentioned the possibility out loud as they look for ways to make midyear budget cuts because of $292 per pupil or more in state funding losses.

And legislation introduced in the House last week would authorize the state superintendent of public instruction to cut pay and benefits for employees of school districts that are in crisis.

“We could ask everybody across the board to take a wage concession, a furlough day or pay back the district,” said DeWitt Superintendent Tina Templin. DeWitt has calculated an unpaid day off would save the district about $103,000.

“That’s a difficult pill to swallow but these are difficult times,” Templin said. DeWitt is looking at cutting more than $800,000 from its $23.8 million budget this year.

In East Lansing, Superintendent David Chapin put unpaid days off Jan. 4 and April 1 on a long list of possible budget cuts the district could make to trim $2 million from its $33 million budget.

By law, schools in the state are required to have 1,098 hours of instructional time for all students in a given school year. Some schools schedule extra time in order to make up for snow days and the like, so they could potentially cut a day or two here and there to save some money and still comply with the law.

Schools that don’t have extra days on the schedule would have to expand the length of the remaining days to make up for the lost hours in order to comply with the law. But either way, this would be a major inconvenience for families that have set schedules for daycare and work for the parents. To make that change in the middle of a school year would be a real burden for many families.

And that’s not to mention the difficulties it could cause for teachers, asking them to shoulder the financial burden for education.