With Hays USD 489 preparing to make decisions regarding technology at the end of the school year in May, the Board of Education failed Monday to advance a proposal to lease a new copy machine at the district’s copy center.
The vote was split in half as board members Greg Schwartz, Sarah Rankin and Lance Bickle voted no to the purchase while members Danielle Long, James Leiker and Marty Patterson voted yes.
According to Finance Director Tracy Kaiser the bid on long-run Xerox copier would cost $1284.74 per month for a five year lease.
The current long-run copier machine at the center averages 194,000 copies per month–about 1,800 copies per student–according to Copy Center Manager Martha Lang.
The high number of copies was one everyone agreed needed to be lowered, but Superintendent Dean Katt and board member James Leiker questioned if the technology was available at all the schools to reduce the need for copies.
Board member Lance Bickle questioned if more teachers could scan and email PDF files rather than make copies and asked if leasing a new machine would discourage the district’s long term goal of going paperless.
“There is no reason we can’t be scanning all of these to PDF instead of printing them…no different than any of this stuff where we wasted a tree, yet we have it on digital,” Bickle said as he pointed to the dozens of paper copies on the board’s own table.
Board member Sarah Rankin added that seeing the iPad technology at last week’s Roosevelt Elementary School Talking Tour in which teachers could electronically “drop” assignments onto another iPad instead of printing them, is another consideration.
The board voted to discuss the issue further at their next work session in January.