Our Schools Very Inefficient

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am on Day 3 of useless PDs. All I want is a few straight hours in my classroom. No, I do not need to hear about the district's "new" initiatives because they aren't new. Same thing from 4 years ago with a different name.

And everything is required with no additional planning time given. Half of it I could've done watching a video on YouTube and not wasting time on stupid ice breakers and other gimmicky activities. LET US TEACH and leave us ALONE!!

Is your planning time not protected in LCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Manual taking of roll. Should be done by scanning. Record-keeping/checking done manually.

Scanning what? The kids aren't chipped like pets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Examples: no working photocopier for a school of 1500 for the bulk of two days. Manual taking of roll. Should be done by scanning. Record-keeping/checking done manually. This should all be available electronically. Reports that can be computer generated and are instead done manually. Five different ways to get kids to school and home. More and more time spent on useless PD and meetings.

What do you think should have been done differently with the photocopier?

This has Got to be a school board member asking such a stupid question.

Nope, not a school board member. It's a serious question. Did the copier break down or was there some other problem? If it did break down, when was the service company contacted? Why did it take them two days to come out and fix it? What would it take for the school to get a quicker response from the service company?

I'm not OP but I'm a teacher in MCPS and the copier issue is a real one. Ours is out of service quite frequently and even when you put in a work order right away it takes them days to come out to fix it. I don't know why it takes them days but it does. I put in a work order a week ago to fix a printer that's not working and nobody has come to fix that either. I will put in a second work order today but that takes time as well. My classroom is downstairs and the only working printer I can print to is upstairs. That was a huge time waste when I was setting up my classroom. I went in during the summer and spent 2 hours of my time unjamming the copier when I only needed 40 copies of a document. The amount of time spent on things like printing and copying due to malfunctioning equipment is mind boggling and extremely inefficient.

[Anonymous]

Most likely the copiers are under lease, which is much more financially feasible for school systems than buying sophisticated copiers outright. Unfortunately, though, it means that you're at the mercy of the leasing company for service, and if you're not happy with the service you're getting you're still locked in until your lease is up (because breaking the lease is expensive as well). Service times often vary with pricing tiers, so getting faster service may mean paying more money, which means something else has to be cut from the budget instead to pay for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Manual taking of roll. Should be done by scanning. Record-keeping/checking done manually.

Scanning what? The kids aren't chipped like pets.

But they are numerous, like groceries on a conveyor belt at Walmart. Sorry, but your little snowflake should come with a UPC label. Otherwise, we are wasting valuable instruction time on manual tasks that should be automated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most likely the copiers are under lease, which is much more financially feasible for school systems than buying sophisticated copiers outright. Unfortunately, though, it means that you're at the mercy of the leasing company for service, and if you're not happy with the service you're getting you're still locked in until your lease is up (because breaking the lease is expensive as well). Service times often vary with pricing tiers, so getting faster service may mean paying more money, which means something else has to be cut from the budget instead to pay for it.

At my kid's LCPS school, every teacher had a printer. No wonder they had great SOL test scores, despite their high FARMs population. Schools that fail to invest in making their schools run efficiently, do so at their own peril.

[Anonymous]

At my kid's LCPS school, every teacher had a printer. No wonder they had great SOL test scores, despite their high FARMs population. Schools that fail to invest (efficiently)[u] in making their schools run efficiently, do so at their own peril.

FIFY

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Manual taking of roll. Should be done by scanning. Record-keeping/checking done manually.

Scanning what? The kids aren't chipped like pets.

But they are numerous, like groceries on a conveyor belt at Walmart. Sorry, but your little snowflake should come with a UPC label. Otherwise, we are wasting valuable instruction time on manual tasks that should be automated. [/quotes
Troll?

Really, teachers need to be able to print.

But, taking roll is an opportunity to give the teacher a feel for who is in class. Also, at the beginning of the year, it helps you to learn the names of the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most likely the copiers are under lease, which is much more financially feasible for school systems than buying sophisticated copiers outright. Unfortunately, though, it means that you're at the mercy of the leasing company for service, and if you're not happy with the service you're getting you're still locked in until your lease is up (because breaking the lease is expensive as well). Service times often vary with pricing tiers, so getting faster service may mean paying more money, which means something else has to be cut from the budget instead to pay for it.

At my kid's LCPS school, every teacher had a printer. No wonder they had great SOL test scores, despite their high FARMs population. Schools that fail to invest in making their schools run efficiently, do so at their own peril.

A printer is different from a copier. You can get a basic printer for well under $100. A school copier is generally going to be a more sophisticated machine that not only can produce copies at a much higher speed than a basic printer does, but also has a variety of collating and binding options. It's substantially more expensive than a desktop printer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most likely the copiers are under lease, which is much more financially feasible for school systems than buying sophisticated copiers outright. Unfortunately, though, it means that you're at the mercy of the leasing company for service, and if you're not happy with the service you're getting you're still locked in until your lease is up (because breaking the lease is expensive as well). Service times often vary with pricing tiers, so getting faster service may mean paying more money, which means something else has to be cut from the budget instead to pay for it.

At my kid's LCPS school, every teacher had a printer. No wonder they had great SOL test scores, despite their high FARMs population. Schools that fail to invest in making their schools run efficiently, do so at their own peril.

A printer is different from a copier. You can get a basic printer for well under $100. A school copier is generally going to be a more sophisticated machine that not only can produce copies at a much higher speed than a basic printer does, but also has a variety of collating and binding options. It's substantially more expensive than a desktop printer.

I thought the same thing when I read the PP. We all have printers in our rooms. That's nothing new and really not a big deal. We print to it on occasion for individual items. Most printing is sent to the Ricoh copier/printer/scanner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Examples: no working photocopier for a school of 1500 for the bulk of two days. Manual taking of roll. Should be done by scanning. Record-keeping/checking done manually. This should all be available electronically. Reports that can be computer generated and are instead done manually. Five different ways to get kids to school and home. More and more time spent on useless PD and meetings.

What do you think should have been done differently with the photocopier?

This has Got to be a school board member asking such a stupid question.

Nope, not a school board member. It's a serious question. Did the copier break down or was there some other problem? If it did break down, when was the service company contacted? Why did it take them two days to come out and fix it? What would it take for the school to get a quicker response from the service company?

I'm not OP but I'm a teacher in MCPS and the copier issue is a real one. Ours is out of service quite frequently and even when you put in a work order right away it takes them days to come out to fix it. I don't know why it takes them days but it does. I put in a work order a week ago to fix a printer that's not working and nobody has come to fix that either. I will put in a second work order today but that takes time as well. My classroom is downstairs and the only working printer I can print to is upstairs. That was a huge time waste when I was setting up my classroom. I went in during the summer and spent 2 hours of my time unjamming the copier when I only needed 40 copies of a document. The amount of time spent on things like printing and copying due to malfunctioning equipment is mind boggling and extremely inefficient.

I hear things like this a lot from the teachers I'm friends with. It seems crazy to me that there's so many high salaries at the central office level when teachers don't have access to the basic equipment they need to do their jobs. Needing to go to a different level of the school to print or to pick up what you've printed is a huge waste of time. Our schools should have the functioning equipment teachers need to be able to do their jobs.

[Anonymous]

Having worked admin positions in office environments when I was younger, IME the vast majority of copier breakdowns are due to user error. People don't load the paper correctly, they don't take staples out of their originals before putting them into the copier, they put excessively thick of flimsy documents through the feeder rather than on the glass, etc. Then when (if) they try to fix it themselves, they don't actually follow the instructions, they just try to yank stuff out, leaving debris behind that ends up jammed further down into the copier and turns a simple jam into something requiring a maintenance visit from the outside service vendor, whose schedules you don't control. If people took better care of the copiers on a day-to-day basis, they'd see a lot less copier breakdown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having worked admin positions in office environments when I was younger, IME the vast majority of copier breakdowns are due to user error. People don't load the paper correctly, they don't take staples out of their originals before putting them into the copier, they put excessively thick of flimsy documents through the feeder rather than on the glass, etc. Then when (if) they try to fix it themselves, they don't actually follow the instructions, they just try to yank stuff out, leaving debris behind that ends up jammed further down into the copier and turns a simple jam into something requiring a maintenance visit from the outside service vendor, whose schedules you don't control. If people took better care of the copiers on a day-to-day basis, they'd see a lot less copier breakdown.

If your current job ever fails, with your attitude you'd make an excellent school administrator.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having worked admin positions in office environments when I was younger, IME the vast majority of copier breakdowns are due to user error. People don't load the paper correctly, they don't take staples out of their originals before putting them into the copier, they put excessively thick of flimsy documents through the feeder rather than on the glass, etc. Then when (if) they try to fix it themselves, they don't actually follow the instructions, they just try to yank stuff out, leaving debris behind that ends up jammed further down into the copier and turns a simple jam into something requiring a maintenance visit from the outside service vendor, whose schedules you don't control. If people took better care of the copiers on a day-to-day basis, they'd see a lot less copier breakdown.

If your current job ever fails, with your attitude you'd make an excellent school administrator.

My business is doing quite well, in significant part because I understand personal responsibility and the need to take proper care of my investment.

[Anonymous]

Maybe we need a PD on proper care of a copier then. Imagine that, a useful PD.