Perseverance Pays Off at Folsom Cordova USD

For years the two-person in-plant at Folsom Cordova Unified School District toiled to produce the district’s worksheets, curriculum materials, tests and yearbooks with a six-year-old Xerox DocuTech 6115 and a DocuColor 12. Requests for new equipment fell on deaf ears—not surprising considering the years of budget cutbacks that California schools have endured.

Then, unexpectedly, something changed.

“California revenues have really turned around, so the governor increased the education budget,” says Doug Parrish, lead printer at the FCUSD Printing Department.

That, in turn, prompted the district to spring for three printers:

• A Xerox DocuTech 6135 with a Freeflow front end, an interposer and a bookletmaker.

• A Xerox 4110, with a folder, stapler and punch.

• A Xerox DocuColor 240 color printer—which has dropped the price for color from 16 cents a page to 9 cents.

In addition, the in-plant will be installing the iWay PressSense Web ordering tool this month.

This largess from the district did not come unbidden, Parrish says.

“For many years I’ve been asking...for an upgrade of a Xerox and a second machine, so they finally took it to heart when they had the money,” he explains. “They knew we needed it.”

Indeed, the document demands from the district’s 30 schools have been increasing to the point where the in-plant had to outsource a lot of work. Now it can bring it all back in-house, saving the district money.

The fact that the administration invested valuable resources in the Printing Department to make sure it keeps up with student enrollment and technology shows how highly it values the operation, Parrish says.

The new machines have made the in-plant so productive that its two employees were able to produce two million impression on them in August.

“Things are looking very bright in the future now,” says Parrish. “The administration has been behind us.”