Are Schools Missing An Opportunity To Reduce Costs and Promote Environmental Stewardship?

As a parent, I welcome the beginning of the school year but dread the pile of forms that come home with each of my children. As I sit at the kitchen table completing an average of four forms for each child, I cannot help but think about how many levels of waste this method of data collection creates.

Every form requests much of the same information but because they are distributed to different individuals, everyone of them must be completed. I wonder why the schools don't make better use of technology to streamline this process for everyone involved.

I wonder how much money is spent on photocopying and printing all of these forms, flyers, and memos that are sent home with my kids - not to mention the environmental cost of diminishing our forests. Finally, there is the labor cost associated with staff redundantly entering data from the form into a database or filing and storing all of that paper into file cabinets.

I do not understand why the schools don't leverage the technology that is available to them. All of this information could be entered into an online form located on the school or district website. Once the data is electronically submitted into a database, appropriate district personnel would have access to the data. More importantly, the data would not need to be gathered every year unless there were changes. An annual report could be emailed to each family asking for verification of data accuracy. Parents could then submit changes through the online form. All school communications should be delivered electronically to reduce printing and copying costs, and to set an example for environmental stewardship.

Everytime I receive a request asking for school supply donations, I can't help but wonder if the money saved from more streamlined operations wouldn't allocate more funds for supplies. I also wonder if the reasons for not implementing an electronic process is because of budget constraints and/or district employees lack of technological skills. Wouldn't an investment in technology and training provide more long-term cost savings?