School In-plants Achieve Straight-A Performance

School district in-plants provide valuable support to their schools, allowing teachers to focus on student achievement.

By Bob Neubauer

Public school has changed a lot since you were a kid. I don't just mean the addition of computers into the classroom nor the lax dress codes that would make your eyes pop. These days, many schools are specializing in specific subjects and allowing students to choose schools based on their own interests.

For example, at Pinellas County Schools, in Largo, Fla., the district's 145 schools focus on such diverse topics as marine science, health care, computers and the arts. Students can pick the school with the curriculum they like best. This has led to some intra-district competition.

"The schools want to draw as many kids as possible, so they're putting together brochures," remarks Brian Chepren, supervisor of Central Printing Services at the district. The schools also produce posters and choice guides touting the programs they offer. All this has brought new business to the 14-employee in-plant.

Choice is also on the menu for the 30,000 students out at Colorado Springs District 11.

"Each school now is responsible for marketing itself to our public as a result of school choice," notes Joe Morin, manager of the 18-employee Production Printing department.

The in-plant's four-color work has increased as a result, helping to justify the recent addition of a four-color Ryobi press and a Mitsubishi computer-to-plate system.

Trends like school choice, shrinking school budgets and a transition of data to digital formats have impacted school district in-plants across the country. Some are more equipped to handle these changes than others.

Diverse Group

In-plants serving school districts are a very diverse group, ranging in size from one employee to nearly 50. Some double as classrooms for graphic arts students; others are run just like businesses. Some receive mostly hard copy masters; others utilize online ordering systems. Some have gone all digital in their printing; at others offset thrives.

And though outside entities like Kinko's continue to target these in-plants' work, the most successful shops are those that have focused on supporting their school's chief mission: improving student achievement.

Home-grown Learning Materials

At Houston Independent School District Administrative Services—the country's largest school district in-plant, with 48 employees—the district has been creating its own instructional materials for several years for its 210,000 students. The in-plant has supported this program by printing and binding these materials quickly and less expensively than an outside vendor could. Interest in these home-grown textbooks is growing.

"The school district has started marketing that curriculum to other school districts, as well," reports Stephen Blakely, director of Administrative Services. His operation has been able to handle these new requests, bringing in more revenue for the district.

The in-plant has also made itself invaluable to the school district in other ways. It not only prints standardized tests, it uses high-speed scanning to convert the completed tests into reports that are available to teachers on their laptops the next day, telling them what areas they need to address with their students.

A couple hundred miles northwest, the 28-employee in-plant at Dallas Independent School District looks out for its district's image by double-checking that the correct logo is used on any material submitted for printing.

"You want everything to reflect well on the school district, so we are very careful," explains Gabriel Guerra, interim director. "Even when printing business cards, we will check the titles to make sure somebody isn't giving themselves a title that they don't rightly deserve. We try to double check as much as we can ourselves before we will print something."

The in-plant even offers free design services for all jobs printed there, though Guerra admits "a lot of the principals don't want to let go of their job and that's why either they're doing it themselves or they're having their teacher do it." The result, he laments, is often a file created with Microsoft Publisher or Print Shop Deluxe software.

Strictly Business

In Colorado Springs, Morin feels the in-plant's fast turnaround contributes to the core mission of District 11.

"We're always under the gun to meet their deadlines and make sure the product is in their hands in order to teach a class today or tomorrow," he says. "[We] make sure that they don't have to go and use a small copier and spend their time at that machine or run around town trying to pick it up from us.

"Every product we have produced is delivered to all of our 62 sites each day. That keeps our staff in the buildings, in the classrooms, in student contact."

Even the addition of new equipment to the in-plant has paid off for the district, Morin says. The shop has saved enough money by upgrading its technologies to give about $2 million in profits back to the district's general fund over the past nine years.

The in-plant is able to do this because it was set up to be run as a business within the district. It has an independent financial statement, pays its own utility and equipment costs and owns its own building. Morin is even able to offer an incentive bonus to his team; they can receive up to 2 percent of their salary if the in-plant meets its financial goals. So far, the shop has reported double-digit average annual growth for the past decade. Contributing to this success, Morin says, are the in-plant's fast turnaround, its ability to keep up with technology and its marketing efforts.

"I always try to stay in front of my customers," says Morin, who went to high school in the district. "We market both to our internal and external customers and I think that has really been the catalyst to that growth."

The Need For Marketing

Like District 11, many school district in-plants market themselves.

Houston Independent School District's in-plant has a Web site and prints brochures and newsletters with in-plant information. It also sets up an information booth at district-wide events.

Dallas Independent School District's shop has had to step up its marketing ever since Kinko's landed a contract to "evaluate" the district's printing needs. One place the shop markets itself is on the inside back cover of the book it prints for the monthly principals' meeting.

Still, not every school district in-plant promotes its services. Some don't need to. Pinellas County's school board has a policy that Central Printing Services must sign off on all printing, so Chepren gets all of it and determines whether to print it or outsource it.

In Georgia, the Richmond County Board of Education has no such policy, but since the seven-employee Production Printing department does not charge back for printing, the schools perceive printing to be a "free" service and send their work there. Manager Cathaleen Shields says she still calculates the cost of every job and prices them against outside printers so she can report this to the superintendent. The school board then decides her budget for the next year.

While this seems to work for Richmond County's 59 schools, it's a far cry from the business model at Colorado Springs District 11. Morin feels a no-chargeback method could be dangerous for an in-plant, especially if enrollment declines.

"I just don't want to be in the position of having to rely on someone else or the general fund to subsidize the operation," he says.

Insourcing Brings in Cash

One of the ways Morin's shop brings in revenue is through insourcing from other districts and non-profit groups. In fact, 67.3 percent of school district in-plants do some insourcing, according to an exclusive IPG survey. It has proved lucrative for Houston Independent School District, among others. Blakely says the in-plant generated $339,000 this way in 2004, and he expects that to grow to $620,000 this year, primarily due to a large contract with the city of Houston.

"They've been very good partners so far," Blakely says.

This new business is helping to balance some of the in-plant's traditional business that has disappeared. The district has moved a number of formerly printed items to its intranet portal, like the telephone directory, the superintendent's bulletin and even some curriculum materials.

"That has, obviously, effected some of our print work," he says.

While Blakely's district is not alone in facing this trend, work is not migrating as quickly to digital formats in more remote places. In Honolulu, Jason Seto, reprographic specialist with Hawaii's Department of Education, doesn't anticipate losing printed materials to the Internet any time soon.

"This is Hawaii," he says. "We've got people who don't even have electricity, let alone laptop computers. How are you going to reach the kids if they don't have electricity or a computer?"

For these students, he says, paper is still the only way to go.

Preparing the Next Generation

Almost 22 percent of school district in-plants also function as classrooms, with students often running live jobs. This has been a boon for districts like Lufkin Independent, in Lufkin, Texas, which started up its in-plant just two years ago. Students not only receive instruction on the full range of equipment, from CTP to offset and bindery, they also produce the district's stationery, calendars, handbooks and even teachers' manuals.

Other shops are run like traditional in-plants, but make time to train students. Over in Honolulu, the Hawaii Department of Education in-plant brings senior graphic arts students in to learn the equipment. Seto shows them the ropes.

"By the time they get out of here, they've touched almost every type of job that we do here," he says.

At Houston Independent School District, the in-plant hires students from one of the district's graphic arts programs to work part-time.

"It's been one of the most gratifying experiences that we've had," says Stephen Blakely, director of Administrative Services.

Seto, too, sees this as a rewarding part of his job.

"It's a good opportunity for them," he says. "I wish I had that opportunity when I was a kid."