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Tucson Unified School District's Governing Board gave the green light Friday night to some money-saving ideas suggested by an outside audit.

Among them: reorganizing the Governing Board office and eliminating two positions, and reorganizing the district's central office and Engineering, Facilities and Planning Department.

At a special meeting, the board approved some three dozen recommendations that it considered to be the quickest and least disruptive to carry out, or the most critically needed.

The full audit, conducted by MGT of America Inc., included 74 recommendations, including 22 that could produce an estimated net savings of nearly $18 million over five years.

"This is really the start to transitioning from the past to the future," said incoming Superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen of the board's decision.

"The audit opens things up where we can do better, and hopefully the community will feel more secure."

Other plans that were approved:

● Developing a comprehensive teacher recruiting and retention plan.

● Holding supervisors accountable for appropriate authorization and management of overtime pay and budgets.

● Developing a plan to manage health care costs and benefit provisions that are fair to employees and affordable for the district.

● Establishing budget targets to increase funding percentages for classroom instruction.

● Hiring an internal auditor who reports to the board through an audit committee.

● Evaluating all bus routes for effectiveness and efficiency.

● Limiting the use of bus monitors to the routes with the greatest needs, and equipping buses without monitors with digital video recorders.

● Requiring teachers and other staff to take a basic trouble-shooting computer skills course.

● Involving students as providers of technical support for their schools.

In October, the Governing Board hired MGT to perform the audit. Along with an inspection of TUSD's business practices and operations, auditors held two community forums to gather public input.