BY STEPHEN H. COWLES/CONTRIBUTING WRITER
stephen.cowles@tidewaternews.com

FRANKLIN—The School Board unanimously agreed Thursday night to save reams of paper and roughly $8,000 a year to publish the bulky agendas in electronic form.

Beverly W. Rabil, associate director of instruction, presented Ricky Dimsey’s research for electronic board books. Dimsey is the board’s network administrator.

In his study, Dimsey recommended using Ciniva Systems to create a website where the agendas and other related items could stored. Ciniva Systems hosts the school district’s web area.

These agendas, for example, would be in a read-only format and accessible to Board members and central office staff through secure identifications and passwords.

Creating this website is a one-time expense of $800, after which the spot would become part of the annual host fee, but with no added regular cost.

Dimsey compared this price to a $2,700 annual fee provided by what he stated was the lowest BoardDoc solution available that he could find.

He also recommended that Apple iPads be purchased for each Board member to enable them access to the site, such as during meetings, or to download them to an iBook bookshelf. The estimated cost for each would be $499 with eight needed at the start.

Further, a wireless link would be established in the boardroom that would enable the iPads to link with the website.

Superintendent Dr. Michelle R. Belle said this plan would “pay for itself by the second year. It saves a ton of paper.”

School Board Chairman Don Scarboro figured at 25 cents per page, multiplied by the 200 pages of each agenda, times the 30 copies made for each meeting, the savings could be about $8,000 annually.

Toner, ink and time to create the agendas would also be saved, Scarboro added.

He later said he figured that all this would take a couple of months to establish.