KO School Board is 'Going Digital'

The Keystone Oaks School Board is "going digital."

Gone are the days of visitors flipping through a 20-page agenda, and of school board members searching page-by-page through an even larger mass of paperwork—now, everything is on screen.

The paperless meetings started earlier this month. Now, when residents come to the meetings, instead of picking up a paper agenda packet, the agenda will be displayed on two large screens, one on each side of the board room.

"I think this adds more transparency," said district communications director Jim Cromie. "This is the same packet that's online. What used to happen was that we would print 25 of these 20-or-more page documents, and maybe seven people came to the meeting. There was a lot of waste."

The screens will display the same agenda packet available on the Keystone Oaks website prior to meetings, which is the same packet school board members use during the meetings.

In addition, the school board members aren't looking at paper anymore, either. All of their information is available on district-provided computers.

Cromie said the computers—one for each school board member—were purchased through a grant from the state of Pennsylvania about three years ago. The grant was available to districts that wanted to experiment with paperless meetings.

Although Keystone Oaks School District had the equipment, organizing the paperless meetings was pushed back so that other issues could be addressed first.

Cromie said there will be some cost savings to the district as a result of the move to go digital. Although he didn't have exact numbers available as of Monday afternoon, Cromie said there would be siginificant cost savings in labor, printing and material costs.

The schedule for Keystone Oaks School Board meetings can be found on the Keystone Oaks School District website.

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