Piles of Paper Gone Thanks to School Board iPads

The days of  copying, collating and delivering 150-page documents and reports to members of the school board are over.

Now, each of the seven Board of Education members in Woodridge School District 68 comes to the meeting with an iPad in hand.

So do the five department chairmen.

The Aug. 23 meeting was the first in which members focused on digital documents rather than printed pages. The iPads are part of a district effort to go paperless – both for the benefit of the environment and the budget.

Copying, collating and delivering school board packets, often hundreds of pages thick, cost the district $7,500 a year, said Brian Rychlec, the board's vice president. The onetime cost for the 12 iPads, plus Bluetooth keyboards and software came to about $7,000.

"It's a one-year payback," Rychlec said. "It's a good use of the dollars because after that year the district saves that money for the long run."

Superintendent Jerome E. Brendel looked into companies that specialize in paperless board meetings and found the cost to be almost $3,000 a year, not including the hardware the district would need.

"The iPad enables us to do the same thing as the $3,000 program would, but it's a lot less expensive," Rychlec said, pointing out that the software used to manage documents on the iPad cost $9.99 for each board member and chairman.

Board members were concerned taxpayers might object to the district acquiring flashy technology in the midst of tough economic times.

"When the benefits and the savings are shared with that individual and those with the community, they will be 100 percent behind the move," member Scott Coley said. "We are preserving and using the district's benefit and managing the district's financial assets wisely."

Board members say having the iPads makes it easier for the board to send corrections or add items to the agenda. Before changes might constitute sending an entire new packet, incurring more copying, collating and delivery costs.

The iPad has also become a digital tool where members can quickly check e-mail, keep up with the district calendar and view documents for the next board meeting.

And they're kind of fun, too.

"They're really simple. The learning curve was very short," Coley said. "They're great."