Almost half of Americans believe that “dramatic changes” would be necessary to bail a school district out of a serious budget deficit, according to a new survey [1] from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, TakePart reports. On the whole, “Americans are pretty sensible about how to slim down public education,” wrote institute president Chester E. Finn, Jr. and vice president for research Amber M. Winkler in the report. Conducted to figure out the best way to patch up the public education system [2] in the U.S., researchers interviewed 1,009 randomly selected adults across the nation. Findings show that the public is aware of the serious economic crisis and the problematic consequences for public schools. About 77 percent said they expected the financial challenges to last for quite a while. More than six out of 10 people approve of cost-cutting measures such as cutting district-level administrators, closing schools with low enrollment, freezing salaries and merging small districts…