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June 16, 2003
Great Expectations, Limited Resources: 12 Tips on Doing More with Less
New requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation mean rethinking strategies for success. What creative solutions are schools and districts turning to?
By Gwen Solomon
In a recent poll, 85 percent of respondents answered yes to the question, "Has your school or district had to make cuts in spending during this school year?" Forty-four out of 50 states have budget deficits, and school districts are feeling the impact in a big way. On the local level, districts lack sufficient revenue to compensate. Many previous sources of capital have dried up, and finding new ones is a particularly tough job in today's economy.
New York state, for example, faces a $1.2 billion reduction in education spending next year, and the impact on Buffalo Public Schools will be a $65 million budget shortfall. According to BPS project manager Herb Cadle, "With budget cuts this severe, everything is on the table." So solutions like a four-day week, no kindergarten or sports, and a reduction in the commitment to technology are very likely.
Across the country in Oregon, the budget story is similar. Because of shortfalls in state revenues, some districts have cut the school year by up to five weeks. Portland, with 53,000 students (the state's largest school district), has made serious cuts — and so have its teachers, who agreed to a contract that includes two weeks of work at no salary.
With limited resources and stringent requirements, strategies must be cost-effective. How can districts decide what to do? And how will those whose mission it is to integrate technology preserve needed funds? Answers are out there.
Here are a dozen strategies to help you get started.
Strategy 1: Combining Funds
John Bailey, director of educational technology for the U.S. Department of Education, sees the silver lining in this budget cloud as an opportunity for districts to rethink old ways of doing things. Bailey advises districts not to look at technology for its own sake but as a curriculum solution. In the past, technology and curriculum directors didn't often have discussions about curriculum, but because they now need to leverage funds, they talk about technology in terms of meeting academic priorities. District plans for the No Child Left Behind law must align technology with curriculum, and funds can be combined as well. "This is good news," says Bailey. "It will force us to use technology to solve educational problems, and the result will be improved technology integration."
Case in Point: John Krouskoff, director of technology for the Public Schools of the Tarrytowns in New York, says, "We look at school district improvement in terms of technology capability that wasn't available five years ago. Our goal is to improve children's learning, and we use anything that will help. Technology tools make a big difference." The district decided that key technologies could yield a significant return on their investment for designated priorities.
As part of a priority for reading improvement, for example, the district formed a committee to investigate how to use technology to provide each child with an individualized program of study to supplement classroom instruction. The committee recommended that the district purchase managed software that assesses a child's reading proficiency, provides individualized instruction and practice, and moves the child forward through the program based on his or her performance. The result is technology purchased through funds for reading improvement, a cost-effective strategy for student achievement.
Strategy 2: Zero-Based Budgeting
Deciding on priorities and funding them ahead of other projects isn't easy. In traditional budgeting practices funds tend to go to as many projects as there are advocates. When money is tight, districts often cut a little from each, leaving no program unfunded and no priority fully funded.
One method adopted from business makes it clear where funds are going. Zero-based budgeting starts the budget process at zero each year. While common practice lets managers begin with the previous year's expenditures and look for places to increase it, zero-based budgeting means that managers have to create a budget starting at zero and build a case for their spending as if no baseline existed.
Case in Point: John Q. Porter, CIO of Montgomery County Schools in Rockville, Md., used the process as a businessman and later applied it to the district. He asked his staff to determine priorities and defend expenditure requests for 2002-2003. The result is that they cut costs and eliminated ineffective programs. In the process, they saved about a million dollars that could be redeployed to top-priority projects. "People get better at understanding what they really need," says Porter. "They learn to make decisions strategically so the priorities are funded."
Porter uses performance measures to determine what matters. His VOSPA plan (Visions, Objectives, Strategies, Plans, and Activities) drives decision making. The staff defines objectives, determines how to evaluate effectiveness, requests funds, and then measures if goals were reached. When achievements fall short, they investigate the reasons and make adjustments. The outcome is greater efficiency and savings and some program elimination. For example, the district had more than 100 servers. They consolidated the services the servers provided, contracted for fewer but more powerful servers for less money, and renegotiated maintenance contracts. With the savings, they could fund the district's priority of data-driven decision making by buying 191 laptops so that principals had the tools they needed to reach the goal.
Strategy 3: IT Outsourcing
Some districts look at technology as a way to trim administrative costs by shifting expenditures to an outside company. Outsourcing a district's information technology support, for example, often reduces overhead. The company hired can leverage costs for tasks such as technology or data management, and so it charges less than the district would spend managing these tasks by itself. It can hire technical staff and save the district maintenance and support service costs. It can provide technology life cycle management, a help desk, program management, legacy equipment support, and applications and data integration — all at a cost far less than a district would spend to set up its own systems.
Case in Point: Neil Delerson, CIO for Richardson Independent School District in Texas, has outsourced to Hewlett-Packard. The benefits have been to reduce operating budget, salary and benefit costs, and training and logistics costs (such as spares, equipment disposal, and inventory). It created a more efficient use of facilities and warehouses while lifting a financial burden from the human resources department by reducing staffing overhead. It provided more efficient staffing of projects and other peak loading activities and brought better service levels with fewer complaints, better availability of equipment and systems, and improved response times on work orders. Overall, this strategy reduced the operating budget by $1.2 million annually, allowing the district to focus resources on its primary mission of educating students.
Strategy 4: Negotiating Hardware
When major companies need to trim costs, they wield the size and frequency of their purchases as a powerful lever for bargains. Even if intimidation isn't in educators' playbooks, they can always shop around. Often manufacturers compete to offer the best price for workstations, routers, and storage boxes in order to lock in repeat business, and they sometimes include maintenance or training contracts at reduced costs.
Finding ways to minimize equipment expenditures helps the bottom line without impacting instruction or services. Some districts replace PCs less often or lease new hardware. Others decide that standardizing on a platform or operating system and even on applications and instructional software can save on costs of training, support, and repair. Using thin clients may be a cost-effective way to harness older equipment to run up-to-date applications. And merging decision-making authority for various technology components — instructional, data services, and infrastructure — can create simpler structures and opportunities for collaborative planning. Making sure that systems are interoperable helps everyone do more data mining for better planning.
Case in Point: Pennsylvania's Northern Lebanon School District, for example, had 700 computers in six schools on two different platforms and multiple operating systems. School leaders decided to standardize on one platform and OS. Technology facilitator Sally Bair says the district was open to either PC or Mac but could no longer support both. Standardizing to one platform allowed the district to centralize management, maximize expertise, and provide more effective training and communication around common resources. All of this results in a cost-effective strategy for technology operations and support.
Strategy 5: Managing Instruction
Some districts find that managing instructional services with a district-wide portal is time- and cost-effective and increases productivity. Teachers can tap into standards-based curriculum and resources as well as find student grades, attendance, schedules, conduct reports, and other data. They can correlate tests and use assessment results for individualizing work and to prepare for standardized tests. Students can access class work, communication tools to work with one another, and instructional materials. Parents can review student assignments and progress. The aggregation of applications and information also helps administrators do their jobs more effectively. Sometimes a single software management package serves up most of these products and services, and sometimes establishing a new interface can provide access to existing but separate systems and make them interoperable.
Case in Point: For large districts like Norfolk, Va., using a system like PLATO saves time, helps productivity, and improves accountability because instruction, assessment, intervention, and reporting capabilities are linked. Teachers search online for precisely the standards-based lessons and resources they need — for a class, group, or individual students. They move electronic resources to where students can use them and parents can check. They learn how to use existing materials, such as textbooks, more effectively. And they can report the results automatically, saving days of work compiling information at the end of the year. Because data is disaggregated, administrators can generate reports on students by specific attributes, without having to add staff to compile data for reports required by state and federal governments.
Strategy 6: Forming Consortia
Large school districts have an advantage in dealing with vendors: because they buy so much, they can demand the best price. A strategy for small districts is to form consortia that can negotiate as one entity for better services and prices. Some consortia provide services directly, some negotiate cost savings for products by aggregating demand, and others provide information online that anyone can use.
Case in Point: Jeff Conklin, executive director of the Washington School Information Processing Cooperative in Everett, Wash., runs the educational service center that many of the state's districts created. It provides services to member districts at a significant cost savings over what the non-members spend. For example, as the districts' application service provider, WSIPC runs the student information, financial data, and human resources systems. The total savings to members average $334 million per year.
The California Learning Resource Network is a state-funded, free software and materials review consortium that provides evaluations of software, videos, and Web sites, ties them to standards, and offers original resources as well as links to existing online resources. Director Bridget Foster says that CLRN helps saves districts money on compliance reviews for products, mandated high school standards alignment for classroom resources, and the cost of conducting research.
In Minnesota, TIES offers numerous services, as well. It includes products, services, and training in five major areas: technical services, student information and administration, systems software support, transportation, and learning and technology. It also serves as a purchasing cooperative for software and licensing. Marla Davenport, director of learning and technology, says member school districts receive whatever services they require for a single membership fee and can save on expenditures for hardware and software because the consortium negotiates with vendors.
Strategy 7: Thinking Small
Using inexpensive handheld computers for student instruction, assessment, and data mining provides a way to address fiscal constraints in the technology plan.
In the classroom, using handhelds increases student-to-computer ratio and time on-task for a smaller expenditure than buying desktops. For time and cost savings and as a way to increase productivity, handhelds serve administrative purposes too.
Case in Point: Wallace Reeves, director of administrative technology for Houston County Schools in Georgia, relies on his handheld as he travels around the district delivering services. He maintains contact with his staff and has access to his application host server at the district office to do instant configuration changes. He says, "Since all our information technology staff carry handheld computers, we are able to work faster and smarter, thereby increasing productivity and reducing the need for expanding the staff as our technology resources grow."
Peter Pappas, assistant superintendent for instruction in Rochester, N.Y., finds handhelds cost-effective as an administrative solution. He says, "The Palm OS is an affordable mobile technology answer for our K-12 leadership. We supply administrative teams with Palms. The cost in hardware and support has been minimal, while the improved coordination and teamwork are immeasurable."
Strategy 8: Relying on Students
No, we're not talking bake sales or candy drives. In some districts, students perform tasks that provide cost savings and help the district integrate technology into classrooms.
Case in Point: One example is Gen Y, which maintains that teachers don't need many technology skills — their expertise should be content. Thus teachers are in charge of pedagogy; Gen Y students are in charge of technology, and learners benefit from a system that relies on people who have specific expertise. Gen Y students work with six teachers each year and perform such tasks as helping them develop Web pages that provide classroom resources.
In the process, districts save money and increase the skills of students and teachers who participate in this technology training. According to director Dennis Harper, "When you do price comparisons of professional development using Gen Y, traditional workshops, online courses, college classes, and train-the-trainer models, districts that use Gen Y save money." On average, using Gen Y services runs about half the cost of the next low-cost option, online courses. The organization has a new program called Gen SCI (Students Caring for Infrastructure) in which students provide technical support too.
Strategy 9: Generating Revenue
Today, almost all states are struggling hard to continue to offer high-quality education services on greatly slashed budgets. Under the circumstances, systems for generating revenue can be lifesavers.
Case in Point: In Texas, state financing for schools is at a 50-year low. Districts are at the legislated tax cap and can't raise additional local funds, so they must cut costs. The Plano Independent School District used up the savings it accumulated over the years when money was readily available and is now spending in deficit. In addition to other cost-saving measures, Plano developed a strategy to market its intellectual property to other Texas districts. According to associate superintendent for technology Jim Hirsch, "Plano sells a standard core curriculum and distance learning courses. Both have electronic delivery, with teacher guides, student activities, and other resources." Every time Plano sells two grade levels, it saves the job of one teacher.
The district offers middle school curriculum in four core academic areas and an elementary integrated science, social studies, and health curriculum, plus reading and music. Virtual high school courses in English 3 and 4, health, and economics are in Blackboard format for other districts to host on their servers. Plano accepts students from throughout the United States and as far away as Tanzania and charges per pupil unit.
Strategy 10: Leveraging Investments
Often, the investment in technology over the last few years means a lot of equipment in place and hours spent in staff development. Sometimes that technology is used effectively and sometimes not, especially when training isn't well focused. Districts can explore how to leverage technology investment and the professional development they provide to support district priorities. Using existing resources — hardware and human — more productively is cost-effective, and the result is a better return on investments.
Case in Point: Community High School District 99 in DuPage County, Ill., decided to place a higher priority on improving student standardized test scores. It now focuses technology resources on assessment and the staff development to support it. The district is rethinking staff development to make sure teachers learn to use technology to assess students daily and then use that information to make better choices for instruction. Instructional technology coordinator David Jakes says, "I think restructuring staff development to support technology for assessment leverages our resources well."
Strategy 11: Outsourcing Instruction
In some districts, instructional programs like distance learning help the bottom line and increase student opportunities, especially when schools are faced with cutting programs. Students can take accredited courses online when there is no local teacher or enroll in programs such as the International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement when there are fewer students than required to make up a traditional class. There are many options: state, district, and university courses, virtual school consortia, and private, for-profit online learning choices. Almost 50,000 students enrolled in online courses during the 2001-2002 school year, and by 2006, it is estimated that a majority of high school students will have taken an online course before graduating.
Case in Point: Liz Pape, CEO of Virtual High School, Inc., says that districts like East Windsor, Conn., use online courses to maximize value for students. With almost all schools now linked to the Internet, the infrastructure is in place. By pooling teacher resources and student interests, virtual schools provide an expanded curriculum for participating schools, and they don't have to invest in development dollars to produce courses or materials. Districts that join can offer learning opportunities at a fraction of the cost of traditional classroom delivery.
Strategy 12: Evaluating Resources
Today the need for financial analysis is greater than ever. Administrators can evaluate the district's technology expenditures and budget more effectively by using a business process called Total Cost of Ownership. A new CoSN-Gartner TCO evaluation tool helps school district leaders gather information and make informed decisions on how to use technology services to better meet their educational goals. Project director Sara Fitzgerald says, "Districts that use the TCO tool to do a technology infrastructure assessment in conjunction with an evaluation of educational goals have data to help them make better investments." Information about TCO and this tool is available at www.classroomtco.org.
Case in Point: The Northern Lebanon School District in Pennsylvania was a test site for the evaluation tool. Sally Bair, technology facilitator for the district, says assessing technology infrastructure helped Northern Lebanon face the real costs. District administrators and board members, who had committed about $180,000 a year for purchasing computers, learned that integrating technology isn't simply about buying technology. Administrators are restructuring budgets to add another technology expert as a measure to protect the investment.
Charlie Garten, executive director of technology for the Poway Unified School District in California, started TCO planning before the current budget problems hit. His new life cycle-standards approach for equipment replacement has been expanded to include phone and data systems and instructional and business servers, workstations, and software. Garten says, "Forcing new strategic plan-ning is never bad. The solution is creativity."
Gwen Solomon is director of TechLearning.com and co-author of Connect Online: Web Learning Adventures (Glencoe McGraw-Hill).
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