Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

I discovered today that I am in need of statistics.  This is an SYP post by the way, so I may stray from topic to topic, and ramble, as I do more frequently than not.  I’ve distributed around a dozen printer cartridges since teachers returned.  I sadly discovered that the library is responsible for providing teachers with replacement cartridges. This saddens me b/c I’ve been doing this teaching gig long enough to know that some teachers print everything even if it’s not important, and some print a lot of material unrelated to school in general.  I asked my assistant if any records had been kept on the numbers of cartridges used, and she handed m a legal pad where last year she and the retired LMS wrote down every time someone came and asked for one.  After analyzing that data,  I found roughly seven who were asking for cartridges continuosly, going through at least one in a month’s time all year.  Forgive me if I don’t know how long it takes to go through a cartridge anymore–This is shocking b/c the school from where I came pretty muched used laser printers, both b/w and color, and I never printed to a desktop printer for the last three years at least. In SC, our teachers are given (YES I said given) $275 to purchase classroom supplies. In my old district teacher materials & supplies other than paper were the teacher’s responsibility (including getting those really expensive cartridges.) That is what many teachers used their money on, among other things. This school had even gone to requiring teachers to purchase VCRs and DVD players for their rooms if they so chose–basically because the school had a video distribution system in the media center, and any instructional video could be played from there. Teachers bought a wide array of stuff, including furniture, books, printers, and even webspace for the adventurous ones.

We have roughly 32 teachers across three grade levels, and that is not counting those singletons like me (who work with students but not in the same sense as a classroom teacher.) When you think that the average printer cartridge runs no less than $20, and most everybody’s printer needs a black and a color cartridge—well it gets pretty expensive just to replace the pair one time. Most teachers had their cartridges changed twice (with the exception of the print happy teachers who had b/w them roughly 9 cartidges each.)

Let’s look closer at some numbers.

7 teachers used 9 cartridges (1 a month last year.)  9×7 = 63 x estimated $20 a cartridge = $1260

The remaining group on average had 2 cartridges changed during the year–
32 teachers – the 7 already mentioned = 25 teachers.
25 x 2 cartridges each = 50 x estimated $20 a cartridge = $1000

Total estimated cost to supply classroom teachers w/ replacement printer cartridges = $2260.

Also add in that the library is responsible for the toner for all laser b/w printers (4 of them) and 2 color laser printers, and we are talking a huge chunk of change!

As you can see. I’m collecting dat for a principal presentation. I just need to find a way to present this so it does not come across as a whine.  I also had a teacher come to me about the new Dell projectors that eight teachers received.  SHe is telling me her (and her co-teacher next door) need USB/printer cables for their projectors.  At first I thought she was confused, but she took mine from my desktop printer, showed me the two ends (one USB and one more square shaped like this, she shared and pointed to).  Okay, I’m notorious for taking things out of the box and putting them together w/o referring to directions frequently, especially when I have working knowledge of them from previous experience. I just put one of the projectors out of its box and connected it to a laptop today, and I don’t recall thinking I needed a USB printer cable!!  Now I need to go back to school and find that dang guide (of which I have no idea its location) and look it up! GRRR. I just cannot fathom that a projector of any kind needs a printer cable.

Oh it’s so fun being new.  I’m trying to decide if 1) she doesn’t realize what she is asking for; 2) she knows exactly what she is asking for; or 3) my chain is being jerked.  Either way, the library is responsible for acquiring these needs.  On the light side, there is a tech budget, though I have yet to see anything in writing regarding my budgets.

Positive NOTES:

I finally got one of the other new teachers into her email account.  She kept confusing her netowrk login w/ her Groupwise (email)login. She listened as I troubleshooted another teachers’ password for Novell, and something I said jogged her memory about what her password is.  She had 77 unread emails. She was quite happy but overwhelmed.

The PE coaches were having troouble printing. I went and looked (I’m a visual learner) and low and behold their laser printers (yes–they have laser networked printers EACH–and they are in offices side by side) were loaded and there, but they were printing to a document writer, which each time asked them to save instead of print. So I reconfigured, and magically they printed.  They were ecstatic.  I thought it was a simple task, but I guess this is all about perspective.

We finished weeding the Nonfiction and Biographies, but I could not run any reports b/c Destiny is in the process of having the student db rolled in. It tells me its running SIF (what ever that means) and i can’t get into it. Maybe tomorrow or whenever I update an SYP again, I’ll be able to report that our age went down. My goal with this first sweep is five years, though I may be dreaming.  But I kid you not when I say we got rid of some real OLDIES!