Saturday, 09 February 2008
By SAM GALSKI
Staff Writer
Hazleton Area School District employees have consistently surpassed a 13.2 million annual photocopy quota during the past four years, subjecting the district to more than $57,000 in overage charges within that timeframe, a recent budget analysis revealed.
While reviewing a central office expense component of Hazleton Area’s 2008-09 general fund budget, a school board subcommittee discussed ways to curb what Director Steve Hahn called an “accountability issue” regarding district-wide use of a mix of 48 copy, fax and similar multi-use machines.
But district officials contend that overages stem from a climbing enrollment and the district’s long-standing practice of copying pages from workbooks, rather than ordering the books at a higher cost.
Concerns raised by Hahn and budget subcommittee members Carmella Yenkevich, Brian Earley and Charlie Schalles stem from a review of copy machine use related to a five-year operating lease agreement Hazleton Area has with Tri-County Business Machines.
Under the agreement, the district leases four-dozen copiers and related machines for about $210,000 per year, according to Assistant Business Manager Robert Krizansky. The agreement caps the number of black and white copies at 13.2 million each year.
Hazleton Area would be subjected to about a half-penny – 0.4 cents – fee for each copy that exceeds the cap.
But overages reported in each of the first four years of the agreement have raised a red flag among school directors and business office personnel.
In 2003-04 – the first year of the agreement – the district-wide copy count exceeded the quota by more than 1.1 million copies. Excess copies cost Hazleton Area about $4,700 in overage that year, Krizansky said.
Overage fees continued to climb in subsequent years.
In the second year, Hazleton Area paid about $10,000 in overage fees for about 2.5 million copies beyond the quota. In year three, the district exceeded the cap by about 5 million copies – at a cost of about $20,000, Krizansky said.
Hazleton Area finished 2006-07 about 5.85 million copies beyond the copy cap, generating $23,414 in overage fees, he said. Last year’s total copy count exceeded 19 million.
The overage fees are added to the $210,000 annual lease payment – and do not reflect the cost of paper, electricity or maintenance, Krizansky said.
The 5.85 million in overages reported last year are equivalent to 1,160 cases of paper, the assistant business manager said. The district paid an average of $25 per case last year.
“We’re talking a lot of paper,” Krizansky said. “We just feel the overages are getting out of hand.”
Hahn and other subcommittee members appeared surprised by the breakdown, with Hahn saying last year’s copy overages were equivalent to a sixth of a property tax mill.
The district logged 3.8 million copies in the first two months of this school year, Krizansky said. He stressed that copy use slows dramatically in the last few months of the school year.
Board concerns
Hahn and Yenkevich suggested establishing accountability for machine usage, with Hahn suggesting incorporating lease costs into the budget for each individual school – rather than lumping them together with other technology items under a central office budget component.
“The principal should be responsible for that, just as they would for textbooks,” he said.
Hahn noted that one of two schools with nearly identical enrollment figures a year ago made twice as many copies as the other.
The reason for the lower count, he and Krizansky said, is that one of the schools assigns copy responsibilities to a specific employee while the other appears to have more liberal use procedures.
“It really is completely and totally an accountability issue,” Hahn said. “It’s not the end-of-the-world type item, but $30,000 to $50,000 – that’s a lot of money. It could pay for another (teaching) position.”
Hahn said he has called for greater accountability for copier use in the past and said he’s happy to see a consensus among the budget review committee.
Krizansky agreed with Hahn’s suggestion of assigning responsibility for machine use.
Accountability
In light of overages, Krizansky acknowledged that copy machine use is a cheaper option than using printers because the district saves money by buying less toner cartridges. He said that each district employee must use a personal identification number when using copiers.
Superintendent Frank Victor said he wasn’t aware of a specific policy regarding copiers, but he said the district would approach an employee if it felt they were abusing the system.
PIN numbers also discourage employees from doing “busy-work copying,” Victor said.
The primary reason for the spike in copies stems from an enrollment increase and the district’s decision to move away from buying workbooks, Victor said.
“Teachers would make copies of the individual sheets they needed,” he said. “If we were buying the workbooks and giving them out, we would be spending more money.”
The district will also look to use its printing press when possible, which should curb copier use, Victor said.
He used a 30-page alphabet booklet for kindergarten classes as an example. In the past, teachers would photocopy the material. The district has been using its printing press instead, he said.
Requests for copying exams at the high school – which has experienced an enrollment spike – have led to more machine usage as well, Victor said.
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