GOP: We can afford to send our children to private schools. The poor should get rich so they can also do so.

For Angela Goines, who has two children in the Detroit Public Schools, news that the system could make historically drastic budget cuts has left her with "agony in my heart."

Detroit school officials say they have no choice after Michigan education officials last week ordered them to implement a contingency plan intended to eliminate the system's $327 million deficit by 2014.

Robert Bobb, the system's emergency financial director, said that to comply, Detroit will have to close 70 of its 142 schools, shut down most bus service and eliminate individual school principals in favor of principals in charge of school "regions." An announcement is expected in April on how many hundreds of teachers would be laid off.