I need to write about this a little more at length after fiddling with it some more, but this morning I put my summer students in the shoes of school board members having to make high stakes decisions month after month, often with insufficient funds and with people likely to be upset no matter what the decision is. Much to the credit of my students, they almost instantly figured out that they couldn't avoid getting important people angry, but since they were on "teams" (simulated school boards from different fictional counties), they became competitive, and they discovered themselves veering far from the idealistic answers they had given in response to questions I had set up at the beginning (e.g., if the board has to choose between short-term gains and long-term achievements, which will they choose?).
In many ways I was hoping it felt to students like they were playing the school-board version of Hidden Agenda, an old game where you play a small-country dictator trying to keep the forces of chaos at bay for as long as possible. I suspect none of them played that particular game, but it was a novel way of getting them to work through the political dilemmas of school boards in the modern era.
No, it won't come out in Milton Bradley, but if I can playtest it in some other places, I may put the complete instructions online.
Great idea!
Reminds me of an exercise some of our math faculty use to illustrate how interest works on loans beyond the usual credit card examples. They hand out some current mortgage rates, a rough formula for property taxes and insurance, and some current real estate classifieds. Groups of students then work out the cost of buying a residence or a rental property and present the results in class. This is a massive learning experience for them!