Less Is More: 10 Ways K-12 Districts Can Save Money

Hello, everybody. Welcome and happy election day. That's right. So as you were joining us live, this is Tuesday, November 3. Welcome to our, quick discussion here. We're gonna be talking about 10 ways k 12 districts can save money. But before we get into that, for those of you that are joining us live, we'd love to have you as a part of this conversation too before I invite up my cohost. So if you have a second, go ahead and drop into the chat and tell us, you know, say hi. Tell us, where you're from. And since this is about saving money, I thought also it's always fun to kinda spend money on little things. So is there something that you bought recently, kind of an impulsive purchase, inexpensive purchase that you bought recently that brought you joy of some sort? So for those of that are joining live, I'll give you a few seconds to kinda queue that up. But again, drop in the chat, tell us hi. We'd love to hear it. Because we do have some fun kind of interactive things we're gonna talk about today. I know some of you may be off today, actually, because I know here in Austin where I'm from, we are off. So speaking of which, who is this guy talking to you? That's right. Man of mystery. No. Not really. But by that pose, you would suspect it. If I could do it this way. Yeah. There we go. Mirrored. I'm Carl Looker. I'm an educator, author, podcasters, bunch of other things too. Former educator, twenty eight years. That's right. I started teaching in the nineteen hundreds here in Austin ISD in Austin, Texas in general. I do a lot of work with lots of different organizations. Follett, of course, been a good partner of mine for for several years. We've been talking a lot about how do we help kind of bring awareness to things when it comes to the tech departments and all the things that we're going through because I feel like we're kind of the guys in the back kinda working on stuff. But, you know, whenever the phone rings, it's never a good thing usually. So for those of that are joining us again, if you got a... If you have a second, drop in the chat, tell us hi, tell us maybe what's an inexpensive purchase you made recently that brought you joy. I'll bring mine up in just a second, as well as my cohost when I bring them up here. I'll have to be... I'll them a second to think of one. As those of you that, are joining us not live know that this is being recorded, and so if you're watching this recording, you already figured that out. However, do have the q and a feature turned on. We have the chat feature turned on. We wanna keep this interactive as much as possible. So again, feel free to use that chat. Say hi. And I know there's a little bit of a delay on our end. So as as it comes up, we'll look at it. Again, these are the platforms you can follow Follett on, Follett Software there, Facebook, X, or LinkedIn, and then Follett underscore software, Instagram. I just said the Instagram, which makes me sound so old. And then, of course, we have our Follett Community where you find great webinars like this, lots of other great content, blogs, articles. I've written a few things in there as well. Follett, again, great at trying to build this community out. Again, we don't wanna... I feel like a lot of us in IT are just kind of in this isolated roles. We're very much in silos. So having a community that can hear us, listen to us, respond to us, I think, is important. So that brings us to today's topic. And I'll say this as I bring up my host. I'm gonna talk about a purchase that I made recently, but let me let me bring up our host first of all. So ladies and gentlemen, Leo Bram, joining us from the great state of Massachusetts. That's right. That's right. Leo has more, letters and titles than I've ever seen in my life. Do you get paid by the letter, sir? I wish. Yeah. I'd make it longer. What's the acronym on that, Carl? Do you know what that is? The DBA for FOT. That's a great one. I could see that on a badge right now somewhere at a conference near you. Doctor doctor isd. Doc... That's right. How are doing, sir? Tell us a little bit about yourself and about your district. Ah, hey, Carl. How are doing? Nice to see you again. So my name is Leo Brehm. As Carl says, I reside here in the great state of Massachusetts where, you know, taxes are alive and well. And and our our school is off as well, but we had a PD day today. So we did allow people to have time to vote, but we did. We were developing ourselves professionally all day today with our teachers. Yeah. So most of my career, though, CTO in the K-twelve space, then spent a little time on the EdTech space, seeing the country and meeting lots of school districts around the country with a little known product called Catch On. We might hear about that in a minute. Yeah. We might hear a little bit. That's where we got some of the experience of return on investment. But then, then I, found my way back in the k 12, in the form of a, I like to just say CFO. So take care of the budget here in a regional school district here in Massachusetts. And it is a regional district, it's a little different, kind of more like a county here. Acts like its own town, if you will. And budget with about $58,000,000 a year. It includes grants and other things. And we're a comprehensive program here too. So we have career and tech, career tech pathways in our schools. So automotive and culinary and, some pretty cool things. So I like that you bring you bring a a vast array. I mean, obviously, you're one of the few people I know that has been in both the CTO and CFO role. I think kind of unique for today's topic in a lot of ways. Before we get to the serious stuff, though, I gotta ask you, what's an inexpensive? I'll tell you mine real quick. So an inexpensive purchase. I am a volunteer at the the HOA. I'm a board member of our HOA here. And and the signage, the digital stuff in their their building is very old. I went to Sam's the other day and for $270, Leo, you could buy a 65 inches TV. Yeah. A little bit of five. So I went ahead and bought all five. No, no, I didn't. Just put them in the closet. No. No. But I was like, it's amazing to me. Remember when flat screens first came out, they were like, thousands of dollars, and they weighed a ton. But now this thing was light. I was able to pick it up, you know, set it up, for signage for the for the office there. So, yeah, that was my kind of fun. Not for me necessarily, but it did help. They needed updating in that building. What about you? Anything fun that you've purchased recently? Yeah. Inexpensive. I I always like a great deal. You know, I'm the CFO. Right? So it's good to know that I got a great deal. I'll tell you actually, I like to talk about this deal because my son is learning how to drive and my wife got a new car this past year and I have a pickup truck, right? So he doesn't wanna drive the pickup truck. And my wife took him out once and he may have hit a curb, right? Let's just say that. And so that was done, right? So she says, Why don't you find something for yourself to commute in, something inexpensive? And so municipalities have this ability to, put stuff on an auction site. And the state of Vermont, had, Subaru Impreza's. So, yeah, and so I scored myself a 2018 Subaru Impreza with only 41,000 miles on it. So At an auction? I had an auction for $7,600 Now I know that's a lot of money, but for a car with only 40,000 miles on it, I felt pretty good about this purchase and it's in good shape. I wanna give kudos folks in Montpelier who, in the state of Vermont who take care of their vehicles. And, because I drove it right out of... I drove it right out. I drove it all the way home and, my auto shop here in my school went over it and they tell me it's in great shape. So I that tie in. You brought in the school. Shout out to Montpelier. If you're on the chat, Montpelier, we we wanna give you a shout out. Never fun. Adding this to my notes of list personally because I have a 15 year old about to... She wants a car too. I have a 17 year old. He has one, but, yeah, I like the I like the auction play. I... It was good. You know, you hear about it and, you know, it's always... It was a gamble sight unseen car. Right? But, trustworthy, good ratings on, on the consumer report. So I will say, I didn't... I wasn't gonna share such a big purchase, like you said inexpensive, but I think as cars go, I don't know. Cars are pretty expensive. So I thought I thought 7,000 was pretty good. That's the that's the real world stuff we're bringing today, folks. Right? We're saving you money in your district and in your personal life. I think that's important. That was a bonus item. Speaking of which, we did, Leo and I had a chat last week when we were talking about this webinar, and he was like, it'd be funny to ask social media, you know, what are some examples of of things to do to not save money? So you asked, I posted it, and I'm gonna... We're gonna bring it up on the screen here now. We got we got pretty good responses from the folks on the on the on the LinkedIns as it were. So Lynette here says, you know, outsourcing bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, maintenance staff saves money on paper, but what cost? What's interesting is a lot of the responses... I was waiting to hear some outlandish stuff, but it was very much like a, you know, whatever you do, don't do this kind of, you know, kind of realm. Let me zoom in a little bit here. Use grants to fund things and build programs with Sandy says. Sandy up in Georgetown right north of me, that can't... You can't sustain for four years. Again, this is kinda cathartic, I think, for some of them. You know? There's like... Now, Chris Layman, our friend in Philadelphia, there at the Science Leadership Academy, of course, says bring your own toilet paper. There we go. We're really gonna save money. He's getting creative at least. I mean, it's saving paper somehow there. Right? Beth Holland, who both Leo and I know are unaware with, you know, talking about purchasing new curriculum, new technology, and then skipping the professional learning. Again, that's tricky. You know? And then she says replacing school counselors with chatbots. Oh. Yeah. AI, we're not quite there yet. You know, John Phillips free one at least. Yeah. John Phillips had a few including eliminating libraries and librarians, which this might be getting too close to home now. All of sudden, like, wait, are we there? Tanya Tanya says buying free quote unquote software. Yeah. And again, more numbers about replacing folks, eliminating all extracurricular items. So I think the reality is is that some schools are actually going through this process now. Right? I mean, some people are actually like, okay, where do we cut staff? Because let's talk about... I mean, that's kind of the elephant in the room, right, is that, you know, staff does make up quite a larger percentage of our It does. What we're talking about here. So, I think for the purposes of this today, for those of you listening, we're not gonna really touch staff. We're gonna try not to. I mean, and we're gonna try to make their experiences more positive. But in terms of saving money, we're gonna we're gonna try to focus on things that don't involve cutting people. So I think that's a positive thing to go. I will tell you this. I did ask Chad GPT, just now to give me some ways to save money. And it says make Wi Fi coin operated. Yeah. So this is what I was expecting. That's a revenue stream. So that's actually saving money. So you're saving money and making money. Oh, you wanna have more faster Internet? Just put some coins. Of course, you have to find coins because they don't make them anymore. Sell premium VIP hallway passes. Yeah. Again. See, I like it. You're cutting... You're saving money, but you're also making money. Charge consultants a consulting fee to enter a building. What? That's okay. Different. And then rent out naming rights to learning objectives. Today's fraction lesson is brought to you by Mike's Discount Tires. That's right folks. We're gonna be learning all about it, but make sure you check out Mike's. Although there's some there's some threads of things here that I could apply other ways, right? Yeah. The the joy of this. But let's get to the real let's get to the real deal. So less is more. How are we saving money? So I'm gonna start us off, Leo, and and, and and you kind of I just think maybe our sponsor... Would our sponsor be willing to sponsor some of that? Like, you know? Oh, alright. Yeah. Running up. Follett? Follett? Like to bring... Yeah. Wait. Yes. Are they listening on this? Yeah. Replace school buses with a district wide conga line. Let's see. Now we're getting fun. This is good. Yeah. Audit your subscription. So, you know, for those of you that don't know, Leo and I have known each other for a long time, over a decade, actually. And I think it was about ten years ago that that you and I were approached with this kind of crazy idea of a of a software that has now been bought and changed hands a few times. We're no we're no longer associated with it directly. But the premise was, you know, how do we know it's actually being used in the district? Right? And so catch on was the prerogative you and I worked on to really get that that impact from both iPads and also from Chromebooks because, you know, we we didn't really know. Now there's a lot of companies that are doing this, I feel like, right? There's, you know, I I was just talking to ClassLink the other day. They're doing something similar, kinda tied into their stuff, which is great because I think we need to find what what you call return on investment, also return on learning. Right? So how do... What's your process, there in Doctor? I mean, what are you guys doing? Yeah. Do do that on a regular basis? Is it like a... Yeah. Yeah. So every renewal, you know, we kind of... And then part of implementation, right? So if it's anything that's related to, curriculum, kind of echoing on Beth Holland's comment there, right? Like implementation and training are a big part of it, right? And you've got to have some expectations for adoption. And that adoption is based on usage, right? How often are they using it? Are they able to get the, are they able to get, sorry, I just love skiing. Are they able to get the, what the information that they're having, what they need to, are they getting the information that they need to get the implementation done, right? Training throughout the year, the repetitive piece of it. I think that what happens, and Carl, you can talk a little bit about like some of that, you know, when you're rolling out a process, you know, or a product and you want to reflect on it, and then you want to measure how many people are using it all the time, right? And we want to build over it. Sorry, I was butchering that up a little bit. No, no, no, I got you. And I think I think what you're hitting at here is perfect. So like, I think there's a few phases to this, and I think you hit on a couple of these. But one is, you know, whenever we're trying something new, there's always the pilot process. And pilot is actually... Is it a true pilot? Meaning, like, are you actually testing it out, looking at your data points, and then deciding whether or you need to go forward with it? Because a lot of times what we do in schools is what's called, I think, a gradual rollout, which isn't really truly a pilot. But then the second part of that, which I think you kinda touched on too, is, like, how often are we... I mean, first of all, are we using it? If we think it's valuable and we're not using it, then maybe we should be training on it. And so there's the second part of that too. And again, time, money, this all ties into this. But then the third part, and I think this is what I found when I first took over my role in district, this is way back when, is that we had a lot of, like, kind of disparate systems that kinda did the same thing, or we had booster clubs or PTAs that bought this software, this math program for this one school. And then we were paying for a wholly different math program for another school. And so it ended up being like, how do we consolidate all that? We didn't even know what was out there for a little while, you know, to be honest. And and free, as someone mentioned, I think, in the LinkedIn, description there, free doesn't always mean free. So kind of looking at all that, the other thing that I think we started doing implementing, if you haven't done this in your schools, think it's important, and it's important to be who you have on the table, who's at the table for this too. And that's having regular sunsetting meetings, what I call sunsetting meaning, like, the end of, let's say, March, April, you're gathering with staff, you're getting, you know, getting a couple librarians, getting a couple teachers in there, some some school leadership, even some students and just saying, hey, let's look over what we're using. Here's the data. What does this tell us? Do we need to keep this or do we need to cut it? Because a lot of times we're paying for district wide licenses. And I know there's lot of software companies out there that listen to this too. They're out we're out there paying for district wide licenses when in fact, we don't really need to use them because we could always just cut it back to, hey, there's 12 teachers using, you know, software x. Let's just pay each one of them for their license because they need it for whatever programming they're doing or or instruction or curriculum. But then we don't need to buy a full wide district license for that. So I think that's think that's part of it. But we're gonna go to you on the next one. Are you ready? Yeah. I just think that that I would just mention that we in here and that cost savings piece in that that, subscriptions. Every single time we cut a purchase order around that, I'd pull a report from our catch on like product. I was thinking, we were just talking about replacing that product just today. My tech team doesn't like some of the other things it does. But I think it's imperative relying on the reports back from the... From those companies about whether or it's being used. It just... It's too much work for you as a CTO or even as a finance person. But pulling a report from a centralized spot is just way better. Yeah. And this one... This goes to you next. So speak... We did software. Now let's talk about the the the hardware. I... It says old services and software, but actually should be old services and hardware on this. So tell me a little bit about, like, you and I talked a while ago about, you know, with your phones. Right? What was going on there? Yeah. So, you know, this was one I learned years ago, and I I don't think it's as applicable today, as it used to be, but you you never know. Right? Some of the old pots lines and one of my previous school districts was a good size for around two years, around 13,000 students. And they would use our schools for elections and every time they have an election, all the voting machines were, they would talk to each other over a pots line, a plain old telephone service. And instead of finding the old one in the line in the gymnasium, they would just stuff it in the closet, right? And then order a new one. So by the time you compound that each month, right? Whatever it was, by the time I came in and I audited all these lines, I had someone audit them, we saved $250,000 a year. Wow. Yeah, it was pretty bad. Like, you really look at that, I couldn't believe it. Like, I had to look at the number three or four times. So I I hope most people out there listening have had some sort of time where they've gone through and and scrubbed all that looked and see. But, yeah, there is stuff in closets or stuff that's that's hiding out there. We'll talk a little bit later on with... Not to give away some of the tips later. But, I mean, what do you do? Can you repurpose some of that? I mean, we'll talk again as a possible savings. But I think that's interesting. I think one of the things we try to do was also using some of those old pieces of hardware and and and legacy machines to try to see, can we extend the life on them? Mean, that's something that a lot of people try, you know, you're virtualizing them or making them some sort of Google Chrome machine. Because sometimes those... The machines, especially those ******** desktops can still work, and we can put those in the backs of labs and the libraries as a secondary unit for for students or, you know, quick things that they can use in a pinch if their laptop isn't working. But I think that's another part of it. It's just auditing those old services. This is mine. I'm gonna... And this... We're kinda switching a little bit. So we talked a little bit about software, talk a little bit about hardware. Number three for me is invest in retention rather than recruitment. So this is somewhat of a way to save money, by spending money, which is kind of counterintuitive. So spend the money on the folks you have. In other words, like put the put the money, invest your time and energy into them, give them the professional learning. I know a lot of us in IT, you know, getting our getting our staff certifications, making sure that they have, you know, all the networking certs and things that they need, and whatever professional learning they do. Leadership, this is another one for those of you out there listening that are, you know, school leaders or district leaders, like, are you doing for your own self, for your own professional learning to kind of to kind of grow yourself? Because I think once you have that institutional investment, it's so much better to do that than to spend thousands of dollars going out and trying to find new people. Right? I mean, I don't know I don't know what your turnover is like, but I feel you can almost, equate that. Right? The more turnover you have, the more money you're spending on just trying to keep people around. Yeah. I think there's a culture item in there too, Carl. I think, to really talk about that, you know, when we talk about retention, it's not just retention too. Investing in people is investing in your environment and your culture, right? And that improves the learning environment and helps us so that you're not triaging with more people, right, for things that can be done through process and just passion into where you, an attitude, right, in the culture. And where I am today, there's been a lot of work done in the culture here. For the last four years, they've seen a decline in enrollment. Then as a result of that, there's been some rightsizing. And so therefore the funding has dropped too because enrollment has dropped, right? And it has been pretty sizable number. And so as a result of that, revamping and being able to readjust your whole culture to work in this smaller student body and reinvesting in the people so that people are not they're feeling better and a bit more pride about where they're going as well, right? And with that comes the passion to be connected to the learning and be connected to the students. So that it's reinforcing that community. And I think that is part of that way of creating retention so people aren't looking elsewhere all the time or may not want to retire right away. And I think one of the items that we're doing is people may want to retire, but they want to stay is creating opportunities for them to retire and give back into the learning community as well as in curriculum advisors. So we do carry things in the budget around that to say, hey, you want to stay on? You could apply, be at a curriculum advisor to help with curriculum management, which is always something districts don't do well traditionally because it takes time. But if you have people who know it and can help mentor new folks coming in and do what I like to call a knowledge transfer, right? I'm about to retire. What if we lighten their caseload that year, that last year, and they spend time doing that knowledge transfer about what they're doing into our new digital repository of content and transferring that pedagogy on best practices that they have. And that's part of that culture for people who have been teaching the whole careers too. People say like, well, what am I gonna do? Like, I like this, right? Yeah, think that's important. I mean, before we go to the next point, I just wanna add one more thing to that. And that is I know I worked in a lot of tech departments where the the the thing I kept hearing was like, we're losing people because the tech companies pay more, which is true. The tech companies are gonna pay more. There's nothing we can do about that. However, what I noticed is that the departments that had good leadership, spent time, and invested in the culture tend to have a higher level of retention. Like, I could go work for 20 or 30,000 more at this, you know, company x, maybe for eighteen months before I'm let go because those companies change so fast. Or I can have the stable job with people that I like to work with, the job I enjoy doing, and then getting to see the benefit of that with students, I think, is important. So sometimes that can make up for that difference in money and salary. But yeah, obviously, if you have poor leadership and poor culture, they're looking right, they're ready to go. They're like, I'm not feeling seen or heard, or really, really valued or respected. And I think that that doesn't apply just to IT. I think that's teachers across the board. And and you you talked about culture, I'm gonna give this one back to you. I... You know, culture building helps with those... The retention part of it, but also talk to me a little bit about fundraising because I think, you know, that's another part of the saving money but making money as well. Yeah. I mean, different fundraising possibilities is, you know, whether it's rentals of your facilities, I think that's a big one that many schools utilize. You know, many, many... You know, schools really are kind of like the center of a community, right? Doesn't matter what age you are, so much happens at schools. If you want to be involved in the community, you're generally walking into a school building, whether it's for a meeting, town meeting, elections, culture, if you want to see school plays, school musical performances. And I think one of the ways to really connect with your community so they understand the value and that, of what you're doing in your schools and showcasing that, the more you can do that. That also encourages the investment by the community into your school programs. So if they're not aware of the great things you're doing, then they don't know where their money is going when it comes to tax time to actually write that check and pay their taxes that go into schools. And I think there's a lot to that. And again, it goes kind of back to that culture, but at the same time, so much of the schools are used outside of the school day, those rentals for men's basketball and sports that are renting the space. There's just a lot that we can talk about in school. You also mentioned to me one time, you were talking about, I mean, like, even like the small changes that you can make in terms of like environment. You talked about upgrading furniture or like giving screens, like neo and things like that. Tell me a little bit about that. I forgot about that. Yeah, so part of our shift here is we are a regional district, but we have a lot of competition for other programs and other schools here. Our students head off to from eighth grade to ninth grade up to 11 different other schools nearby, whether it's gonna be local vocational schools, agricultural schools, and other private schools and school choice schools. And so to kind of change the look and feel and update the look and feel here, we're turning it into more of a college campus environment. So when you walk into our schools now, you're gonna see furniture that encourages students to congregate and collaborate together, right? High top tables with high chairs at them, soft seating in the hallways, down the hall, branded things like cafeteria tables that make it, what that school pride and the school colors. The furniture and the media center has been updated with modular capabilities on the stacks so we can create new spaces that students can engage in with soft seating for studying. Those little nooks, don't if you ever seen those things are great. They're like little houses. Yeah, little and it kind of blocks some of the noise out. So students really enjoy those. So this has been a new look and feel here. And then with the, of the, I guess that return on investment too is hardware. We talk about Chromebooks a lot and no knock on the Chrome platform, but the devices that districts tend to buy is the cheapest thing going, right? Sure, because we're short on money. That's, yeah, so we gotta spend $270 on this device, right? Because testing and money. Exactly, right? And I think there's a lack of respect for those and the functionality of them doesn't hold up. And unfortunately, I think the pandemic drove a lot of that. However, this year we made a very conscious decision for two reasons. One was we went to MacBooks, the MacBook Neos here in high school. And the transition has been so seamless. Students are extremely capable across platforms. And our breakage level has plummeted by like 50, 60%, or even more, like it could even be 80%. I think we've had three damaged devices out of six fifty, like out of six fifty. So right, whatever that number is. We didn't Less have than 1%, yeah. Yeah, we didn't have a ton prior because we were buying better Chromebooks too prior to this. Okay. For the first couple of years that I got here, we were buying better Chromebooks because they're going to be using these devices in and out of school. We want better screens for them, and we want to we want it to be a model. Less students leave and they want to come here. So again, that's part of that culture and it reflects on the professionalism that we are engaging in a platform that students wanna use. And then from the security folks in the room, Apple has something called private cloud compute, which keeps student information and user information safe. All you Apple users out there get it today in your iCloud environment. And so... And it stepped up a bit for the k 12 environment. So it helps us, you know, with that little worry on the AI side happening. So gives us a little more visibility into that. I mean, that really let... That leads right into what I'm what I'm gonna talk about, which is total cost of ownership, the real total cost, because we hear that word a lot TCO. What does that mean? You know, and and I think, you know, you you kinda hit on it just there. It's like, if you spend not a lot of money on devices that are cheap, they're gonna be broken. There's also the psychology, which you mentioned, which I think is interesting. I'd love to see a study on that too. Like, what what does it say? You know, if you give a a student a nicer device, are they gonna tend to take better care of it? Because you're already seeing early numbers. Now the NEO's only been out for a little while, but, you're seeing some early numbers that it's already... You know, less breakage, less damage. Again, nicer device. That goes back to your kid's car, right? If you're gonna I don't know if you've used one, Carl. I mean, used... So we got some units here to work. I used it. I'm still using one. Not on one right now, but I still use it on a regular basis last night. You know, it does, I mean, I loaded up with, you know, six different emails, addresses, you know, downloading all the time and you name it. So from a day to day device, productivity device, it works fine for me. And if it can work fine for me, I feel like it can work fine for just about any student. For what I do hardware. This has not been sponsored by Apple folks, but yeah, they take a screen, take it, Apple's gonna take a screen grab of it. If it works for me Well, that's true. At the same time, though, you know, if you really want a decent Chromebook, you know, you're gonna spend $5,600 too. Same same... That same price point. And I think what that means also is like that the longevity of it. Right? So Chromebooks, if they last three to four years, great. If a if a Neo can last... We don't know yet, but, I mean, typical MacBooks have lasted, you know, I... Mine can go seven, eight, nine years. So you spread out the costs. So Yeah. You can. I mean, I... They expect... I... You know, we expect it to be a minimum of four years. Right? Yeah. And I guess that total cost of ownership too is things do break, right? And I know that whether you do a fancier Chromebook or you get a Neo, they do have the ability to cover that with a warranty, with a break fix warranty. So we did do that just in case. But at the same time, we haven't had to do many of those. And I think not being a Apple commercial, but I think that, again, it's also that, I think there's a certain level of respect with the device that goes with the kind of device that students realize that they like to use the screen because it's easier on their eyes. And I think as we all are using screens in our life still, think having a better screen for us to stare at is is... We all appreciate it. So why wouldn't we ask our learners to do the same? So... Yeah. Yeah. So... I... Go ahead. Sorry. I was gonna say I like that our our top five that we've done so far. I mean, some of it is cutting, but some of it is also investment in long term and long term growth, which means it will save you money over the long haul. Right? So, yeah, we're saying maybe spend a little bit more, but that could be over time. It could save more. Right? I would say we still have the middle school breakage. Right? And so if we look at what we're trying to collect, you know, for damage, if we don't have to do that, we're still in decision making process whether to continue this shift down to middle school this coming year. But will that help the breakage? I've seen some pretty drastic numbers. I don't know if anyone's got any on here in the Q and A to drop some percentage of middle school breakage. But our fifth and sixth grade numbers are rough. And I've seen some neighboring cities and towns have some pretty ugly numbers when it comes to that breakage. And I think part of that is responsibility and culture, I think part of that. And then there's also the respect level on the device. And so, and then that return on investment is just an example on hardware, and you should expect that same thing on anything that you're doing. You know, if something may cost more, is the implementation better, right? Is the interface more streamlined? Does it make it so that it removes things from people's process as opposed to adding them? If you buy something just because it's cheaper, but it adds ten minutes to someone's process of whatever that is, hiring a substitute or, you know, whatever we're putting into place, you know, an LMS or posting grades, you know, there's a certain value in time, and user experience. So I think it's worth that as a good return on investment. So... Yeah, for sure. And I think even help desk tickets, So if it's a machine that's pretty intuitive and easy to use and the UI and the interface is good, you're maybe not getting as many questions. Of course, some of that front load like you talked about with onboarding too and training. If they understand how it works, then maybe you get less tickets, which again, time, money, all that kind of ties in. I'm going to go to you on this and bundling services. Talk to me a little bit about that. I mean, are some ways we can save money by bundling? I mean, I know about the, the insurance companies. Only pay what need, Carl. Yeah, exactly. It's like... I left my email. I don't know where my email is. I Yeah. That's right. Liberty, liberty. Another commercial not sponsored by this webinar. No. Not not. Yeah. So so talk to me about bundling. Like, what does that look like on an IT side or maybe just in general on the business office side of things? Yeah. You know, I think... And I think a lot... Many of us are experiencing that. Right? You know, we talked a little bit about, you know, Catch On and a lot of the services out there that are putting... They're all kinda taking those same items. They all have an analytics tool, a filtering tool, a classroom control tool and something along those lines. I think part of that bundling, there is ways to save money in that, right? And I think that sometimes that's okay to do it as long as the product, focuses on the streamlining the user experience and it does what it's supposed to do. I think one of the things we're seeing in technology is standardization of functions in operating systems has become, has allowed this tool sets to pick up all these functions, All these types of things that happen on the fly. Then the only thing that differentiates them is the service, the kind of service you're getting from the company. Some of the maybe added functionality and how they work together and how the data works together. And I think that is what we're looking at. And you can save money in the bundling of services. Sometimes services as opposed to humans is another way to do things. Not that I'm advocating for removing humans from certain processes, but sometimes outsourcing some items, like maybe you don't want your tech team just fixing Chromebook screens all the time and keyboards. I mean, you'd rather them out there working with humans. So maybe you're outsourcing just the repair of those things. And you can bundle... Buy a bundle of Chromebook repairs. I know you can buy them for a $100 each, right, no matter what it is or it may Yep. Be even And you can buy a 100 of those so you can spend $10,000 and get a 100 fixed Chromebooks that you know you can send out and they'll just return. And they'll all be working and Versus spending like maybe something 20 something thousand dollars in man hours to do it. Exactly. To do those replace. So now you've saved yourself 10 k. And your team... And again, that's a culture thing. Your team doesn't like doing it. They hate it. And they they just do. They don't like Yeah. Doing That's like you say that for the one the one person that's like, okay. It's time out, you gotta go fix Chromebook screens, come on. That's right. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, one of the place I consulted with, I incentivized it, know, I said, I know it's part of your job, but we'll, you know, we're gonna pay you an extra, know, $10.15 dollars a unit, to do at home, take the parts home and repair them. And I had tons of people do them and I'll tell you it was cheaper than sending them out. We bought the parts, but again, that's more of a triage solution as opposed to when we just get people to like, respect the hardware. And then if you change the culture, can have a better outcome. It all ties together. And I think you're talking about automating, which gets me to the seventh point here. That is, you know, there's some things you can do, you know, and I... And a lot of tech departments have already figured this out, but I do think there's still places where we can look and see, like, where are places we can automate? Obviously, a lot of this comes... There's a human aspect to this too. So I think about, like, our our our data systems, you know, how we're uploading stuff into our LMS. And I think it might have been you twelve or thirteen years ago who told me about this thing called IMS Global and the one data standard and all this. And I was like, man, what a great idea. Like everybody has the exact same data standard since clean. And we're getting... I mean, it's been a while, but we're close. Theory. It was a great theory. Yeah. But I think everybody always... Yeah. Right. The theory is because everybody wants to add their extra fields and that mess... Again, makes the data messy. But if you can get that cleaned up, I think nowadays... And and we haven't really said the two letters that everybody talks about at every webinar, which is AI really much. But I do think it does help, and there's places where you can... And especially in this realm, I feel like automation of things, obviously, not sensitive to your data. But then being able to figure out and evaluate your system and say, like, hey. Let's look at the last three months of help desk tickets. What are some low hanging fruit? Like, go through and comb through all the disc... The the tickets and say, it looks like you've got a ton of problems with projector bulbs. Like, maybe start thinking about how do we switch those out for, like, the laser projectors, you know, things like that. Although this is, you know, or screens that you buy at Sam's for $270. Right? Well, yeah. I mean, right, I mean, Kyle, we haven't talked about... We haven't even said the the the, you know, the the two letter acronym yet in this call. Right? I know. We haven't said it once yet. Right? Thirty nine minutes. We made it this far. We made it this far. That's a record. You know you know it's gonna happen eventually. Right? We all know that AI is gonna play a role in this. And so... And, you know, I can't imagine there's anyone in the education space that's listening to this webinar that, you know, that hasn't touched it, you know, some sort of, at least a a gem, which I didn't realize. That's the nickname the kids. It's just create a gem for that. Yeah. Just make a gem. Make a gem. I I mean, I've been doing some vibe coding, recently on different things, various things. But I think one of the ones that I loved was like taking data points from like a Google Form and just saying make this cleaner, make it look interactive, build me a quick website that it just... And again, not taking student data. This is just kind of anonymous data. Right. And saying, hey, now I can send this out to teachers. I just click on the buttons and you could see, like, quickly, like, what does it do? I mean, this one was about screen time. So it was like, what are sixth graders looking at more versus twelfth graders in terms of by the end? The answer, by the way, is Roblox over TikTok. But to get you compare, contrast versus just looking at a giant spreadsheet with 287 responses and then trying to suss out. I know Google does some of this on the back end too. They give you, like, kind of the pie shaped stuff, but it's not super interactive. So, I mean, even just simple things like that, I feel like to me, it's getting closer. And I think, again, as long as the human's in the loop, I think, why not use it to help us, right, figure out where those systems are that we're we're we're where we're where we're we're wasting time. Yeah. A 100%. You know? And there's a there's a lot of little things in our workflows, that we can automate. Right? There's There's just a lot, and I'll give you, I can give you a few examples, right? Like the posting and it'll help with transparency too, right? You know, we've created a a lot of things for compliance, you know, in K-twelve, you know, like posting videos of meetings, right? And that's something where we can create an automation that once YouTube is done processing that last meeting, post it to a folder so that it's on the publicly facing folder. And then that person who usually drags it and drops it, doesn't have to do that drag and drop in. And there's so much of that, that it adds up over time. Somebody I'm working with on a new product project, his philosophy around using very complicated AI processes that he's building out is that it's going to allow it's going to free us up to be human again. And I think that's a really good I think it's just a really good approach as opposed to evil AI as it's just, how about removing some of the nonsense portions of the data that we've created for ourselves to manage, right? And we have. We've created email is probably the best example of creating our own, drowning in our own nightmare. Our own inefficiencies, yeah. Oh my goodness. If there was a way that in listservs, right? I can't even... And if any of my colleagues in Massachusetts out there who are on the Massachusetts tech directors listserv, you know what I'm talking about. You do. And you know it. I'm a big fan of... I mean, I feel like Reddit was built as a listserv. I mean, originally, but it's like, I I learned a lot on Reddit, but listserv... I appreciate it. I appreciate it. But what I need is we we need the AI bot to help us sift through it. Kinda clean it up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think and I think looking at all... I mean, going back to what we're just talking about the low hanging fruit brings me to this next point, and that is like when you see if there's a way to automate and also to look at kind of your data and what you're doing, hardware replacements, like software cycles, all those things. Yeah. You know, possibly there's a way to send an alert that tells you, hey, by the way, you know, red alert, you're about to, you know, get into a big emergency situation because this has gone way over life or something like that. So talk to me a little bit about emergency Yeah. I've got a couple examples of this. Yeah. So I, I won't name the city that I worked in, but for those who know me, you know where I, know where I've worked. You know People are Googling you right now, let's see where you Yeah, yeah, they're on my LinkedIn. But they, you know, I was told once, you know, like electrical systems failing and, you know, many districts wait till it breaks before they actually address it, right? When it would have been way less expensive to engage with it if they had just done it in the moment, right? So like in this case, it was an electrical system. And the example they would use is, this place would just let it fail and have no problem spending a $250,000 to fly in generators power up the building because the electrical And system failed, I was like, and that kind of mentality goes back to that planning process, right? And that preventive maintenance is making sure you're putting money in and maintaining over time, right? And so that those big ticket items don't hit you all at once because those will cause things like disastrous cuts due to shortages in budgets. And it breeds things like public distrust your ability to plan and run a district. So as the CTOs who may be focused on using in this webinar and maybe folks in the CFO side, we all know that we talk about plans and everything else and it's hard to build these plans and capital plans. But I think having money that gets kind of always set aside no matter what happens, that money is always set aside for the building. Then things like the gutter system failed outside of an elementary school, we have the money to replace that because it's not typical building maintenance. And I'm lucky here, my predecessor kind of built that into the culture here and the budgeting process and they've maintained it. And I've seen other districts that have not done that. And it seems like those little things like gutters and everything, but a gutter here Add up, yeah. 500 feet of fencing because of an incident, that stuff adds up, right? But if you have those funds available, you can easily address those issues. Yeah, and I think that kind of preventive maintenance, lighting, and even if it's hiring someone to replace all your filters in your HVAC HVAC, yeah. Yeah, those types of things, planning for the CTOs, planning for your infrastructure upgrades. I've actually started exploring hardware and infrastructure as a service, and it's kind of new for the IT space. Interesting. Yeah, there's a company out there called, I don't wanna plug a company, but it's the only one I know of. It's called Meter. And it's... They cover everything, switches, access points, one set fee every year. And if you need more switches and access points, they send you more, right? And I think that there's something to that, and they monitor it and you can manage it. And I think there's a certain key factor of removing some things off your plate so that you can focus on other things. The instructional stuff. Yeah. And I think that's... It goes by almost like the... Back to the car analogy. Like, do you own it or do you lease it? Right? I mean Right. And there's a cost there's a cost difference there too. So you kinda mentioned this earlier, generating additional revenue. I mean, you you mentioned, you know, rentals is a big part of that. Are there other... I mean, I think of a situation in our district where we had, like, we had a certain generation of iPads that we were getting rid of, but we were able to to... There's a company that was interested in buying them off of us for as long as they were mostly functioning, like, not the real destroyed ones, to go back to that again. But, you know, $70 an iPad, all of a sudden, you know, the next iteration when the high school students all wanted lap keyboard laptop or keyboard cases for them. Yeah. That basically covered the cost of a really nice keyboard case. So we were able to kind go cost neutral on that. So, you know, other ideas, ways that you thought about, you know, generating, you know, do do you create guarantee Yeah. Know. I kinda like AI's version of that, you know, bring your own toilet paper. Thank you, Chris Lehman. Yeah. Little plug for, you know, for the Paperless. Paperless. Yeah. Going paperless, right? Charging for Wi Fi, yeah, those are good ones. No, all joking aside, I think schools that can get grants, that's a great way to generate revenue. Rentals is something we do a lot of. So particularly in a regional area that requires some centralized services, you can, if you have the space, particularly with declining enrollment, it is an opportunity to regionalize services. And I think that helps to generate revenue. And I think just again, the culture piece where people are coming to your events, they can help support those events, support those programs because you're selling tickets for the show that support the theater program. All those revenue streams go right back to them. We do a lot of solar here. Some of the previous administrations put a large solar arrays on all of our buildings and And our parking we generate so much power, our actual usage, but they have to be maintained because they weren't maintained. So I did have to put some money in to maintain them. But now that they're back up and running, I will say that, we're only, the number I was getting, someone, I didn't know how much it really was, but someone said, wow, you use a very little power. You get charged And a little that's because of our solar arrays. And those generate revenue for us too, because A, we're not spending the money on it and we can sell what's called the REX and I don't even know what that stands for. Yeah, was gonna say because in Texas we do that too where you sell back or you sell to grid essentially a percentage. You can sell power back too. We use all the power, we consume it all, but we can sell something called REX which is something that people have to give credits for And generating so we sell those REX and then we get actually just cash coming in to support that way. Know, it's, and I think, so those are big commitments, but as far as smaller areas, I think rentals is one. And then after hours professional development, those programs showcase your school. And if you can get people to run programming, community programs are a big way to generate revenue as well. Yeah, you have access to, I mean, in raising research, we have teachers. And again, talk about declining enrollment, I think that's a national problem. But you have, if you have amazing teachers in your building, I mean, you could also put them to use they, you know, use them as trainers or teachers for other services, they can get paid a little bit extra money to to do this, do the work on the side, or companies like you said, can rent out the space, use the space. Because I mean, most companies don't have, like, giant classroom spaces where they can actually do training. So why not, you know, lease out? And then here in Texas, it's really big on Sundays. I don't know if you get this in Massachusetts, but Sundays, people rent out all of our giant auditoriums and stuff for church... You know, churches come in and they put up their signs just for Sunday, and then they... Then they're out. But, you know, we... At Westlake where I used to work, there was a that was a big thing because we had a beautiful screen up there. They got to use it. It kind of helped fund a lot of our IT replacements when it comes to the screen edge and the signage and stuff in that building. You're making me wonder about that. If I put branded toilet paper, what would someone pay for? Like, you know, the catch on catch on toilet paper, right? I mean, on does sound good to be on toilet paper. That would make a lot of sense. Alright. We're off the rails here folks, but let's wrap up because we've got it. We're almost over. I want us to be done by now, but we're doing good. We're having good. There's a lot of stuff we've hit on, but I think the final one is this one. And I think, you know, you and I, you know, we both have worn different hats. I... You're now on the finance side more than more than ever. So it's kind of neat to hear over the last few years the things you've discovered, you know, in the conversations you and I've had. But, I think this is kind of a final point. I think this, you know, is a is a is a personality thing, but it's... Yeah. It's a personality thing. It's not really... I mean, it's not something I can say, like, we'll definitely save money or we'll help you raise money. But I do think if these two groups, if IT and finance get together, I... We used to call it... I mean, I'll be... Between me and you, we used call it purgatory because I would send POs down there, and they would never come back. It's like, we'll never hear from it again. And so it's, you know... Or there's like some little box that we forgot to check. And so, you know, that's to be kind of tied at the hip. So talk talk a little bit how you've seen both. Yeah. I think those were... I mean, them working together is imperative today. If you talk about culture as a, and this kind of goes back to some of the things we touched on, like for instance, if a district goes and it spends tons of time, and this is another previous district, right? That implemented Schoology and had all their teachers put all much work into Schoology, right? And then somebody comes in and just says, we're a Google district and not really doing the homework about how it's being used, how much it's used, how it's organizing students, teachers, executive function and workflow, and one stop shopping for people to, for students to go in and do their homework and hand in their work, and then decide to, we don't need Schoology after people have invested all that time. Not only like just the rumor of that to a teacher is stressful and they find out it's to save money because, oh, it's just saving money. Again, that goes back to a conversation between IT, finance, and curriculum in this instance, right? Where you're saying, how is it being used in the learning process, right? And why is it being used in the learning process? And without an organized structure of those three folks actually working together, you're not, that it's gonna trickle down. Mom and dad are fighting up top, right? Yeah. If the parents are fighting up top, it trickles down to the kids. You can feel it in the house, right? You feel it in the You can feel it. That's Yeah, exactly. And that's an example of that, right? And I think that comes to, again, some budgeting and real time budgeting and knowing total real cost. And I think from a finance perspective, that's building an environment of it's Okay to run out of paper money if you've used all your paper. Do me a favor. Don't buy more paper out of the paperclip budget. I want you to put the paper budget over so I know how much it really costs, how much paper you really need. Yeah. Because it's different when you say, yes, maybe there could be waste, right? But that's on, we'll figure that out through IT and analytics, right? We'll go and figure out, well, how much are people printing, right? And that's a different conversation as opposed to, well, you've used all your paper money, right? I think that those conversations can be fruitful as opposed to the no people. And I think IT directors and CFOs are notorious for saying no. The people of no. Yes. Are the knights who say no. No. Exactly. I mean, this feels like I... A lot of these things... It's funny now that we're all the way through this, I just started thinking a lot of this is, household conversations. Right? Right. Emergency spending as much as possible. I mean, I just got done talking to my wife about budget and, oh, we gotta eat this much. Well, you know, there's some guilt there too. Like, well, I over... Like you just said, you spent all your paper money. So what are we gonna do? You know? Again, I think you got... It's almost like being partners doesn't mean that you have to agree to everything either. That also means you could... That means you can have discourse and conversation, come up to an agreement, versus, like, competing with each other, you know, and and then kind of fighting over those dollars, because eventually, you know, we all have to get along. Don't you love those summaries you get now from, like, your credit cards that tell you how much No. I don't love it. I don't love it. Gas. What? Grocery's okay. I know gas. Right? Well, there it is, folks. There's the top 10 ways to save money. We went through a lot of different things. You heard, you know, from Arturo and Wi Fi to BYO toilet paper, but also all of these real items. And I wanna thank Leo, the district business administrator for finance operations and technology. Let me just say this right now. My favorite my favorite district business administrator for finance operations and technology that I know, you're the number one in my book, sir. So thank you so much for being a part of this. We are gonna send you off stage. You could wave goodbye to the crowd there. And, thank you guys all for being a part of this. I'm sorry. Cut you off, Leo. Thank you all for being a part of this. I know we got... We're we're right at time here, but I hopefully you got something out of this. You're watching this recording. Again, check out Follett Community blogs, articles, webinars, all that good stuff. And then stay connected, with our with our friends here at Follett on these platforms, on the socials, as they say, and we hope to see you out there. Next one. What are some ways you're saving money, folks? I mean, this is a lot of lot of interesting things out there. So thank you all so much. I've been Carl ******. Y'all have a great rest of your day. Less is more and go save some money.