Five weeks ago, Saline Schools decided to go green and switched to Hub Printing Services, which means that staff no longer have individual classroom printers. Instead, they share centralized printing hubs, much like a typical office.Now, instead of 375 printers distributed throughout the schools, there are 100. The goal of Hub Printing Services is to streamline operations, reduce costs, and join the ranks of organizations becoming more energy conscious, said Heather Kellstrom, director of instructional technology. “With the decreased funding, individual printers are not directly tied to our students,” Kellstrom says, “so it’s hard to continue to support something that down the road will cost us a huge chunk of change.” The smallest school has six printer hubs while Saline High School has 32. While a printer is never far away, it’s hoped that even a small distance will cut down on the number of unnecessary print-outs.
Besides reducing the cost of printers, paper, and supplies, the district will save on maintenance and repair costs. The Technology Department shrunk from 13 employees a few years ago to five today, and printer maintenance and troubleshooting consumed much of their time. Kellstrom points out that because printers are expensive to maintain and there is less reason to make paper copies these days, the move simply makes good sense at a time when resources are so stretched. And, five weeks into the new system, teachers are saying the adjustment wasn’t as bad as they’d feared. Woodland Meadows teacher Ms. Betsy Marl noted, "I have heard about a large reduction in paper use at other districts. A teaching friend informed me that in Livonia they had reduced their paper use by pallets by using hub printing."
One change teachers liked immediately was a new secure printing function, which allows them to send a document from their computers to a networked copier, which holds the document digitally until they decide to print it. It works especially well with confidential documents. “We are working with staff and have a few bugs to work out,” Kellstrom says, “but overall the system is functioning as planned.”
(Photo: Heritage School Teacher Ms. Robke)
