Mixed reviews for system

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LPS' new $1.8 million printing system promised to turn around any job teachers sent there by bright and early the next morning. In the first month, there have been a fair amount of paper jams.

BY MARGARET REIST | Lincoln Journal Star

They’ve done away with the fax machines, ink jet printers and dinosaur-era copiers.  They’ve put in fancy new machines that print and fax and copy at the push of a button.

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New paper is loaded into a copy machine at the Lincoln Public Schools Print Center. New this year, the LPS Print Center completes 700-800 jobs daily for all the schools in the district. (Gwyneth Roberts)

New paper is loaded into a copy machine at the Lincoln Public Schools Print Center. New this year, the LPS Print Center completes 700-800 jobs daily for all the schools in the district. (Gwyneth Roberts)

Lincoln Public Schools employees who know their way around giant copying machines have set up shop in the district offices: the hub of a new $1.8 million printing system that promised to turn around any job teachers sent there by bright and early the next morning.

And in the first month of school, there’s been a fair amount of paper jams.

“It’s been a rough start,” said LPS Purchasing Director Dwayne Odvody.

A larger-than-anticipated demand the week before school started and during the first week of classes meant delays in getting orders to teachers — sometimes as long as a week — and a print shop staff that had to work overtime and weekends to try to keep up.

Breakdowns of the print shop machines during that time — one for more than a day — added to problems.

Sometimes, teachers said, they never got their orders. Some teachers haven’t received tests the day they’d told students they should be prepared. At times, orders have gone to the wrong school.

The delays at times have forced teachers to change lesson plans at the last minute, which means being less prepared for a class of 30 students staring at you from their desks.

“In teaching, you don’t have inconveniences,” said East High English teacher Dutch Fichthorn. “It’s a disaster.”

Fichthorn recalls one day not getting the materials he’d ordered and having to search the Internet for similar materials, then printing it off at school. That’s a more expensive option for the schools. And it means having less time for lesson planning.

“In teaching lingo we call that a punt strategy,” he said. That’s easier for veteran teachers, but still not the best scenario.

District administrators and other staff helped out in the print shop and by the end of the second week of school, it was largely caught up, Odvody said.

“We’re back up to speed on daily delivery time,” he said. “What we’re working on now is maintaining that.”

Part of that is making sure teachers understand how to use the system and are comfortable doing it, Odvody said.

New system to save money, update machines

Last year, LPS signed a five-year contract with Xerox to manage the new system, after having piloted it last fall at two elementaries, one middle school and one high school.

At the end of the pilot project in December, the district started getting all schools on board, getting rid of 1,805 copiers, fax machines, printers and updated mimeograph devices in faculty rooms, classrooms and offices. They put 505 new Xerox machines in their places. 

Of those, 303 are of the multi-tasking variety: copying, faxing and printing. The district also added 200 new printers. 

To move to the new system, LPS paid $828,000 to get out of existing lease agreements, a cost included in the Xerox contract and one officials hope the district will make back in lower costs.

Their hope, Odvody said last fall, was to save about $450,000 a year by reducing the per-copy price. That amount includes the cost of replacing old machines, something the district hadn’t been able to do regularly with the old system.

In real dollars, he said, the savings will be closer to $250,000.

But money wasn’t the only reason for the change, Odvody said.

Officials wanted to get rid of outdated machines that were inefficient and broke down frequently and to create a system that could keep up with existing demand. They also wanted to save teachers time by having a central print shop do most of the work, and give them better copies and more options. 

The system allows — and encourages — teachers to send orders via computer. That means they can request copies from home if they want. And at some point, Odvody said, teachers should be able to store materials in computers rather than in file cabinets.

“This was, if you will, a paradigm shift, a different approach,” he said.

Although teachers say the new system is working better now, deliveries still don’t always get to them  on time.

It’s stressful to send anything to the print shop because you don’t know when you’re going to get it back,  said East High oral communications teacher Matt Davis.

He also questioned what will happen if the LPS Internet system goes down, since that’s how orders are processed now.

 “It’s like a lottery system,” Davis said. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you come up with craps. It’s like rolling the dice.”

LPS makes 91 million copies, faxes a year

Undoubtedly, the task of managing LPS paper is daunting: The district makes about 91 million copies and faxes a year.

The print shop was expected to do much but not all of that work, with officials estimating it would make between 4 million and 6 million copies a month.

Demand in the first three weeks of school surpassed the 6 million mark, but Odvody said it’s too early to know if that pace will continue.

“We knew the start of the school year would be huge but it exceeded our expectation,” he said.

Adding to the demand is some curriculum materials that need to be printed off the Internet, Odvody said. 

Print shop employees worked around the clock and on weekends to reduce a growing backlog. When machines went on the blink, Xerox personnel printed some jobs at other locations at no extra charge.

“We had a couple of machines that went on the blink at a time when we really needed to get the volume down and out the door,” said Odvody.

Still, some school administrators are optimistic early problems will be worked out.

“Any change is rough,” said Clinton Principal Mona Manley. “It continues to go smoother and smoother as we become more comfortable with it.”

Maxey Elementary Principal Pat Decker said his teachers had no problems, in part because the school was one of the pilot locations and teachers became proficient last year. One benefit is that the system frees them from standing in line at the copy machine, he said.

“For us, it’s going really well,” he said. “We’re able to ship 85 percent of our photocopying to the print shop.”

District officials say it will take a full year to know whether the savings estimates are right.

This year, though, some schools experienced sticker shock when they got statements showing the cost of copying so far, compared with what they’d been charged in previous years.

The costs are higher than before, Odvody said, in part because they’re figured differently. Now, the the per-cost copy assessed to schools includes such other costs as equipment replacement previously absorbed by the district. But schools will see savings because they no longer have to buy things like ink cartridges and toner.

District officials are trying to refigure budgets so schools will have additional money to pay those costs.

In the meantime, they’ll keep working at getting teachers what they want when they want it.

“We are very determined to make this as smooth as it can be,” Odvody said.

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.