As budgets grow tighter…how many school Superintendents would approve the following expense requests?

Expense Request A:

I am submitting a request to spend thousands of dollars to print up thousands of pages of information that no one will read…

Expense Request B:

I am submitting a request to spend thousands of dollars for software, hardware and personnel to support the software and hardware so we can upload documents on our intranet that no one will read…

Bottom lines are getting crunched because schools are still spending thousands and thousands of dollars on printing, distributing and updating Student Handbooks, Teacher Handbooks, Employee Handbooks, Department Binders, Code of Conduct Manuals, Emergency Plan Binders, Operations Manuals, Safety Manuals, Regulatory Manuals and others.  And after spending thousands of precious dollars, schools have no idea if anyone is reading them and even if individuals do read them, schools have no way of knowing or proving it.

Bottom lines are getting zapped even more thanks to software, hardware and personnel to create “digital handbooks” and “intranets”.  Once again schools are spending thousands of dollars and schools have no idea if anyone is reading the documents and even if individuals do read them, schools have no way of knowing or proving it.

And bottom lines continue to get robbed because schools will spend thousands of dollars on labor-intensive efforts to collect paper-based documents that have been signed by students, parents, teachers, staff, bus drivers and others.  Then schools will spend even more money on labor-intensive efforts to file the signed paper documents and ongoing efforts keeping track of who signed (or did not sign) with spreadsheets and home-grown databases.

Status quo training costs are also zapping bottom lines.  If a school adds up all of the labor-intensive efforts, training documents, training facilities, trainer expenses, overtime, travel time, re-training sessions, spreadsheets and paper-based documentation of attendance and other costs, the numbers can be shocking.  Unfortunately we human beings are not very good at remembering a lot of information delivered via a “fire hose” once or twice a year, which leads to mistakes, re-dos, fines, lawsuits and numerous other bottom line killers.

If you would like to see how your school can replace 20th century approaches that are killing your tight budget, click here to see how TIPS is equipping schools with 21st century tools to reduce and eliminate these costs.