During the difficult challenge of finding ways to save money, administrators are looking in all areas to make positive changes without sacrificing the quality of education and services to their students. Rather than sacrificing the quality of the educational experience for students, administrators can look at their administrative processes and procedures to determine where and how they are spending time and money.
1. As many educational technologies advance, schools are now able to take advantage of more solutions to eliminate unnecessary costs. These advances include automating the system of communication between administration and parents, student information system that hold important student information (grades, progress reports, attendance), and online registration systems which, if taken advantage of, can be a benefit to all involved.
2. There are also systems to coordinate the payments of school administrative fees such as lunches and other necessary items that assist in eliminating the need for school personnel to be involved in the process and therefore allow for more time spent focusing on more student focused tasks.
3. Another important money saving idea is the use of educational software programs designed to bring the latest information into the classroom. These programs allow the teacher to provide students with key learning tools without the need for the teacher to expend additional time and resources gathering this information on their own, which requires a high expenditure of their valuable time which can be diverted to personal attention to the students themselves.
4. Utilizing paperless and online forms or electronic office systems for the procurement of supplies and text books can be a big source of savings of time and money in addition to saving the administrator their personal working time, while providing the opportunity to utilize their resources on other tasks.
5. Eliminating some offsite field trips by utilizing video conferencing or online resources can provide a significant boost in budget by allowing students to experience and explore learning resources without leaving the classroom and school facility. The savings of funding for bussing and additional personnel required to facilitate these necessary educational experiences can be significant, while allowing the same learning to be achieved without sacrificing time away from the campus.
By thinking in a resourceful and innovative manner and utilizing the advanced technologies available to them, schools should be able to save significantly in areas that will allow them to be more effective in personnel resources without sacrificing the funds in other areas that would take away from the social or educational resources of the students.
J. Pantle
