Blue Valley In-plant Wins Organizational Impact Award

As school districts look for ways to cut costs, they find it difficult to get around the high expense of providing curriculum materials for students. At Blue Valley Schools in Overland Park, Kan., the in-plant stepped in with a solution. After negotiating with the publisher for the acquisition of full reproduction rights, Blue Valley Printing Services produced 10,629 student workbooks for the fall of 2015, saving the district $43,000.

Paul Ackerman (left) and Jason Gillam (right) receive their in-plant's award at the IPMA 2016 conference from awards chairman Chris Donlon.

The in-plant’s success in this endeavor earned it the Organizational Impact Award from the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. This award recognizes a corporate print/mail center for outstanding contributions related to non-production activities within the parent organization.

“Our staff takes great pride in knowing that while we ourselves are not in the classroom each day impacting the lives of our students, our products are,” notes Paul Ackerman, Printing Services coordinator. “We focus our efforts on supporting our teachers; giving them the tools they need to provide the best education possible to each and every student. This generous recognition of our work from IPMA further reinforces in all of us the commitment and drive to excel in our core mission to our customers.”

Blue Valley Printing Services partnered with the district curriculum administration to implement new procedures for the production of standardized curriculum materials, with a focus on cost savings and unburdening teaching staff from the tasks of production, giving them more time to focus on lesson planning. After successfully printing more than 9,000 workbooks in 2013 for the elementary communication arts curriculum, the in-plant printed 10,629 science workbooks last year and posted almost 1,400 PDF files online for future orders.