Educational Consortium Gets $100,000 Grant for Area School Efficiencies
Contact: Owen Maurais, 581-3651; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The Penobscot River Educational Partnership (PREP), which includes the UMaine College of Education and Human Development, has received a $100,000 state grant to help area school districts operate more efficiently.
Owen Maurais, executive director of PREP, says the Maine Municipal Bond Bank “Credit Quality Improvement Grant” will help partnering school districts — serving 9,000 children — to streamline operations in business and accounting, food service, environmental health and safety and an online substitute teacher call system.
“This is the largest grant that we have received,” says Maurais, a former Old Town schools superintendent. “In the past, we’ve received grants for $10,000 to $15,000. This grant is a reflection of where we are as an organization. Success breeds success.”
The grant will allow partnership schools to consolidate certain operations, starting in the 2007-2008 school year, or even sooner, Maurais says. The funding has allowed PREP to hire UMaine adjunct business professor Paul Myer on a part time basis to serve as project director. A student intern from the UMaine Masters in Business Administration program also will be hired part time. They’ll study the member schools’ operations and recommend further efficiency measures.
Measures, Myer says, “are not going to be quick fixes, but things that will produce some long-term benefits for the schools and, in turn, the taxpayers.”
Partnership schools include Brewer, Bucksport, Alton, Bradley, Greenbush, Milford, Indian Island, Old Town, Orono, Orrington, Orland, Veazie, Hampden, Newburgh, Winterport, Holden, Eddington and Clifton, in addition to United Technologies Center in Bangor and Maine Child Development Services/Penobscot County. The University of Maine lends its expertise to the consortium through participation by the College of Education and Human Development, College of Business, Public Policy and Health and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
“This fits quite nicely with where the state is going,” Maurais says. “We were going this way before the governor’s proposed regional consolidation ever became an issue. This simply is about efficiency.”
By hiring a region-wide health and safety expert to oversee inspections, policy enforcement and maintenance of PREP members’ buildings, schools can avoid higher consultant costs now paid on an individual school-by-school basis for those services.
A common accounting system also will create efficiency savings, as will a planned four-district food service program to help coordinate menus, achieve bulk purchase savings and reveal other efficiency steps, Maurais says. A new Web-based district-wide substitute teacher pool and standardized salary system will reduce both costs and labor.
Myer says that while reallocating human resources promises productivity, major savings also can be achieved through PREP’s benefiting from the university’s huge purchasing power. For instance, partner schools will be able to realize discounts through UMaine’s Computer Connection, a discounted-price computer and software store, he says.
“The results of this project will show clearly the efficiencies and savings achievable when business operations people from the University and the K-12 schools put their heads together,” says Robert Cobb, dean of the College of Education and Human Development.
School districts, the university and other members of PREP formed the consortium eight years ago to collaborate on common goals and services ranging from student services and curriculum development to staff development and management techniques. Not only has the organization saved money though efficiency measures, according to Maurais, but it has allowed for improved services throughout the member school districts, including some of the smaller, more rural schools bound by tight budgets.
Richard Lyons, superintendent of the SAD 22 in Hampden and fiscal agent for the PREP grant, says PREP has already established itself as a learning community for the school districts it serves by focusing on staff development and educational programming.
“The future goals of the organization are to focus on those professional development initiatives to enhance instruction and leadership, and ultimately enrich student learning opportunities,” Lyons says. “This $100,000 grant will allow the school districts to research joint initiatives to deliver services effectively and efficiently. When the governor and legislature talk about collaboration, they only need to look at PREP for a model that is effectively working for the betterment of children, employees, and taxpayers.”
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