In this time of schools being burdened with budget cuts and facing the difficult decision of determining how and where to save money, administrators are looking in all areas to make changes that will positively affect budgets 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 to determine if changes can be made and use these best practices to utilize time and money cost effectively.
1. There are many technological advances that schools can take advantage of to eliminate unnecessary costs, such as automating the system of communication with parents and students to relay important information such as grades, progress reports as well as moving to an online registration system 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 employing these best practices to make use of 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
