If you work at a K-12 school, this sight is common and familiar—seeing a recycling bin filled with discarded paper sitting right next to the main copier. Its contents likely include old versions of classroom activities and assessments, jobs that were neglected and left behind, discipline notes, progress reports, and extra copies of assignments.
In addition, there are bound to be teachers searching for a one-page document printed from their classroom. The search is in vain; however, as the document has long since been carried off by another teacher in the middle of a stack of newly printed tests.
As a building principal, those recycled and misplaced papers might as well have been printed currency. Every piece of sensitive information that was left out represented a potential FERPA lawsuit, (along with an additional loss of money).
With school budgets already too tight for comfort, available funds should be going into the classroom and student programing and not wasted print.
Cut Classroom Costs with Paper Reduction
One answer is to digitize your documents. This eliminates much of the need for print. However, it is a very time-consuming process and can be difficult to coordinate in districts and buildings that have not shifted to a one-to-one model. That’s where software solutions come into play.
PaperCut is a great option for relatively any K-12 building. It’s simple to implement, user-friendly, and incredibly effective in generating fast cost savings.
Here are some of the most common ways that PaperCut saves K-12 schools money:
- PIN and Badge SwipeLong gone are the days of printing 150 copies of an assignment only to find an error, correct the error, and send the job of 150 copies once more.PaperCut allows users the option to send as many jobs to the copier as needed, without “committing” to physically print each page or version until it’s just right.An end-user walks up to a copier when they are ready, swipes a badge or enters a unique PIN, and can select from a list of stored jobs which ones should be transferred to paper.
The others can be deleted, harmlessly disappearing and not costing their district a cent. Additionally, this prevents sensitive documents from being left on paper trays or, even worse, ending up in a pile of another staff member’s copies and waiting to be distributed to another student by mistake. There is no more searching for printed jobs or worrying about what may have been left behind.
Please notice that I stated, that “an end-user walks up to a copier when they are ready” and not THE correct copier. Instead of sending a job to a particular printer, the user simply sends a job to be printed and can access it from any device with their identifying PIN or badge!
- Setting PoliciesAs soon as a drop of non-black ink or toner is transferred onto paper, it is a color copy. One hyperlink in blue ink can instantly raise the cost of a print by eight times.
PaperCut can help IT Directors and Administrators set policies to prevent these mistakes from equating to increased spending.For example, the default on all devices can be set to black and white for any document or, more specifically, can be set to black and white for any printed email.
Pop-ups can be set to inform users how much their print jobs are going to cost and to make suggestions such as resending the job as mono or double-sided print. Not only does this save money, but it also teaches positive print habits.
In addition, quotas can also be set for individuals, departments, or any other desired groups. This motivates these users to more carefully monitor their printing and to not spend their available prints and copies on documents that are not directly beneficial to the classroom.
- Increased VisibilityAs a previous administrator myself, there were multiple opportunities in which I needed to know who was printing specific documents or when a specific print job had been sent. PaperCut’s expansive array of reports can easily answer those questions.
This saves precious time so that administrators and IT directors can focus on instruction. It also allows these individuals to have direct conversations with staff members or students regarding the types and amounts of jobs being printed so that effective changes can be made immediately.
There are many other benefits to PaperCut that can simplify a school’s print environment, in addition to those that were already mentioned as cost-saving features.Mobile print is an aspect of the software that is gaining more and more attention as one-to-one and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is growing in popularity.
PaperCut is a premier software solution for the K-12 environment and, as one of the top 10 PaperCut vendors in the Midwest, imageOne is a fantastic place to learn more.
See what PaperCut™ can do for you: Schedule a complimentary discovery call with imageOne by completing and submitting a request below. Our team will reach out to schedule a quick call at a time that’s convenient for you.
