A district-wide initiative
While searching for a solution to its asset management problem, the district found one possible answer right in its own educational technology stable. Already using Follett Learning’s Destiny Resource Manager, the district started leveraging the platform’s physical inventory capabilities. Using the web-based system, teachers and administrators can view current inventory levels and locations, manage the inventory, and more efficiently plan for resource expenditures. They can also reallocate assets to different schools, thus reducing redundancies and stockouts.
Harkin’s team began by conducting a complete asset inventory. The process was handled by a dedicated team of staff members for whom “the management and movement of those assets” were part of their part of their job duties, she said. Finally, the district installed a new staff person to oversee asset management from the central office and coordinate the process across D300’s 26 schools.
As a component of the physical inventorying process, D300 weeded out books that weren’t part of its curriculum. “Why track assets that don’t matter to us anymore?” Harkin asked. In addition, the district shifted its textbook ownership philosophy from “building level” to “district level.” Because textbooks are now a district item, if a building has an overstock of 100 books, those assets can more easily be moved to another school as needed.
On the financial side, Harkin estimates that the district saves “a couple hundred thousand dollars per year now,” with most of the savings coming from its ability to more accurately track assets across its schools. In the past, for example, institutions with growing enrollment numbers would simply buy textbooks, not knowing that another school with declining enrollment numbers had the needed assets sitting in its storeroom.
“In the past, schools would hold onto them because they already paid for the books and didn’t want to give them up,” said Harkin. “By taking ownership across all of our schools, we’ve been able to make asset management a true, district-wide initiative that everyone is now onboard with.”
No more paper and faxing
With 230 schools and over 150,000 students, Dallas Independent School District relied on an antiquated asset management system that resided at the district office and accommodated just four user logins. When they needed textbooks, teachers would have to fill out handwritten forms and fax them to the office, where someone else would input the information and place the order. And while the previous system was used to maintain inventory, the fact that only four people could access it made it cumbersome and far from collaborative.
Next page: Data helps track assets
- TC- What student choice and agency actually looks like - November 15, 2016
- What student choice and agency actually looks like - November 14, 2016
- App of the Week: Science sensor meets your smartphone - November 14, 2016