New Copier System Said to Cut Costs in Mineola Schools

The Mineola School District is once again making changes to its , this time in response to its aging stock of printers and copiers around the district.

On June 16 the board of education is set to vote on a resolution regarding new technology purchases, one of which will help implement a new copier network into the district, which is said to reduce costs and the amount of paper used in the schools.

In 2001 the district created a copy center at the with the intention of running all projects through that location, but which was not being used to its fullest capacity.

“We really didn’t have accountability for how many copies were made,” Superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler said at the board’s most recent meeting at the , explaining that work was not being funneled to copy center and was creating a large expensive.

The district’s copier lease totaled $270,000 with 1 million pooled copies per month. Without a set quota the number of copies made in the buildings routinely exceeded the contract limit incurring charges of nine cents for each copy over.

The district now has a quota system for copies along with a network connection which tracks the number of copies an individual makes per month.

“We wanted something to make it easy to track documents, send them to the copy center, get copies in an efficient way that would lend teachers to use the system,” Dr. Nagler said.

Each employee now carries ID cards used  to track copies and account for a copy budget.

Mineola had originally purchased 42 smaller machines, which have now been reduced to 12 “workhorse” printers - large office-scale units that can print, copy, scan, fax, staple, hole punch and bind

Each of the buildings have smaller machines in order to funnel larger projects to the copy center, which does not count against the new quota of 750 copies per month and can turn around orders within one or two days to the respective building.

The district’s original lease included toner, which Dr. Nagler said didn’t make sense because the amount of copies was unlimited.

With the purchase of new Lexmark printers over 4 years, the district is projecting a savings of $115,000 in first year.

“It gets better because we’re using much less paper,” Dr. Nagler said.

Saving would also be gleaned from reducing the amount of paper from 15 million pieces to 8.7. The projected savings would through February would be about $37,000.

The next step the district will take is to place a quota on number of printouts, which personnel allegedly used as a workaround the copier quota. However, there are two different systems in place and a single network is necessary to implement the program, which the district will do by purchasing Lexmark printers.

New color printers will also be purchased to replace ones which are 5 years old. These new copiers can scan and e-mail them as a digital file to teacher’s network folders. Teachers would also be able to use the system to print from which will become mobile solution in middle school.

“Eventually we’d like to get rid of all the hard copies and move to electronic copies,” Nagler said.