PENNSYLVANIA COUNTY SCHOOLS SAVE CASH BY GOING GREEN

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PENNSYLVANIA COUNTY SCHOOLS  SAVE CASH BY GOING GREEN

Erie County, Erie schools going green by saving paper and cash
ERIE, Pa. — Local governments are doing more business electronically to save paper — including cash.The Erie School District saved almost 4 million sheets of paper and $22,000 in the last school year by discouraging unnecessary printing, assistant schools Superintendent Walt Strosser said.A new Erie County initiative to distribute monthly financial reports by e-mail will save an estimated $1,000 a month on ledger paper, said Sue Ellen Pasquale, manager of general accounting for the county.Additional paperless initiatives are also under way or planned to save some green for taxpayers."It’s kind of a synergistic thing going on. And it’s building," Erie County Clerk Doug Smith said.Erie’s Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy has been on the leading edge of that synergy, and this fall will launch its biggest paperless project yet.

Incoming freshmen will do all class work and homework electronically. Even field-trip permissions and other parent notifications will be handled online and via the district’s automated phone system, Associate Dean Jim Vieira said."We expect this next freshman class will be the first to go 100 percent paperless," he said.The school previously reduced paper in the two classes that used the most of it — computer and language arts, Vieira said. Teachers trained themselves and others to use e-mail, Google Docs and Wikispaces instead of paper to assign and accept student work.Students submit assignments via home computer, school laptop or computers available in school labs, Vieira said."Teachers and students have bought into this, and being paperless is culturally acceptable," Vieira said. "As the class of 2015 comes in, a lot of the big stuff is in place."

Collegiate Academy’s first paperless class is part of a larger Erie School District initiative to save paper and paper costs.A centralized printing program that began the last school year requires teachers and staff who need more than a few dozen paper copies to order them from the district print shop at Central Career and Technical School. Employees who previously printed their own copies in individual school offices now are printing less, said Strosser, the district’s assistant superintendent."Just by centralizing that, people seemed to think twice about printing stuff willy-nilly," he said.In July 2009, the district ordered 6,000 cases of paper for the coming school year and had used it all by the following April. In July 2010, the district cut that order by 800 cases — and had 200 unused cases at the end of the school year, Strosser said.

Each case of 5,000 sheets of paper cost the district $27.23 in 2010-11, print manager Joy Fetzner said.The $22,000 annual savings — though modest compared to staff cuts and other reduced spending — is still good news for the cash-strapped district and has generated additional savings, Strosser said."We can print much more efficiently, for a fraction of the cost, in the print shop. Before that, we were going through toner, ink and printers in all of the schools. Now we don’t want to replace desktop printers at all," Strosser said.The Erie School Board will join staff in saving paper this fall. New software will allow board Secretary Robin Smith to scan agenda documents and deliver them to board members via e-mail, saving as many as 200 pages printed for each of nine school directors at each meeting, Smith said.

That would save about five cases of paper each year — and about $136 — for monthly business meetings alone. The Erie School Board also convenes in work sessions and special meetings most months."Right now at meetings, each director gets a stack of paper about an inch thick," Smith said.A similar paperless initiative by Erie County Council has saved county taxpayers the cost of about nine cases of paper, or between $232 and $308 annually, since council members first booted up their laptops in 2007, County Clerk Doug Smith said. That’s despite an increase in state regulations, requirements and communications — many of which would previously have been committed to paper."Council agendas might be 200 pages long, and we routinely made paper copies for years for 15 or 20 people in this building. We’re down now to about three paper copies for people who still request them," Doug Smith said.

A larger project — to distribute monthly financial statements by computer — will save the county about $12,000 a year on ledger paper, said Pasquale, the county’s accounting manager. A separate initiative soon will computerize all county invoices and payments.The savings in paper checks alone should be significant, said Robert Catalde, the county’s clerk of courts. "The county pays a lot of bills," he said.Beyond that, electronic payments will save significant staff time, Pasquale said. The bank will automatically match cleared checks against the electronic file that the county sent."We spend two weeks a month reconciling our bank account. With this new system, I expect that to be cut in half so that staff can move on to other tasks," Pasquale said.

There is always more work to do, Pasquale said."Council has cut 70-some jobs in the last couple years, or a little less than 10 percent of our staff. At the same time, all of that work is still here," she said.The new paperless initiatives are among the first recommendations of a joint committee of elected officials and staff looking for ways to complete necessary tasks and communicate them to other county departments without cutting services."One of the first things that really came to mind were ways that we could save on paper and kind of pursue a green strategy throughout the various branches," Doug Smith said.Earlier paperless programs in the county have benefited the public in more ways than paper and employee savings.

Public access to county records has also improved, county officials said.
County court, property and estate records digitalized 10 years ago can be accessed for free on computers at the courthouse, or from any computer for a fee.As those records went online, other departments began to post more information, including County Council agendas, on the Web, Doug Smith said."It’s not just an issue of getting into the paperless age. It’s about helping the public get information," he said.

Governments are required by law to keep certain paper records, but that may not be the case for long, said Catalde, the county’s clerk of courts."Other states do allow for electronic filing of documents and pleadings, and I think that we will see that in Pennsylvania within the next couple of years," Catalde said.In the meantime, the county recently leased 13,000 square feet of storage space outside the Erie County Courthouse for $16,236 annually, and additional records remain stored in the courthouse.Cost and storage savings aside, not all public officials are sold on doing business electronically. A few county officials still request paper documents, Doug Smith said.

Millcreek Township School Director Ron Wilga understands some of the reasons that they do.Wilga has been using a district-issued laptop to conduct school business for the past four years, but said that he is not entirely comfortable with it."When you’re into an agenda and need to see a document, it sometimes takes a while to go to it on the computer, where you used to simply flip a page and get there," Wilga said. "I could also make a note a little easier in the margins."I still multitask better on paper."

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August 18, 2011 at 7:41 AM