Evergreen School District manipulating schedule to save money

Evergreen School District in Vancouver, Wash. is facing a $15 million shortfall. Last night, the school board voted on a way to save $1.5 million, 10 percent of the shortfall, by adjusting student schedules. The theory is the shift will save money by consolidating bus routes. As an April 30 article in the Columbian, points out:

• High school and middle school students will start 20 minutes later; and
• Kindergartners will attend school two full days a week, instead of five half days, with a floating extra day maybe every other week to ensure the same number of instruction hours.

All I can say is I’m very glad my daughter is in kindergarten this year. I know how much she needs a regular routine, and two day per week class with a floating extra day is a little too vague for her.

Welcome to E2PSP

The push to make government agencies and nonprofits more efficient and effective is not new. However, with recent economic turmoil and a renewed demand for environmental sustainability, it seems public sector organizations are scrambling to try creative and innovative ways to save money, retain employees, save the environment and still provide quality public service. This blog is meant to aggregate some of these ideas to see what works, and what really, really doesn’t.

What we need now is feedback from you — city managers, county administrators, nonprofit executive directors, frontline staff — of experiments your city, county, state or agency is undertaking to do more with less. Comment. Suggest a link. Lets share ideas to try to become, truly, more efficient and more effective.

A 4-Day Work Week Might Save Money, But Is It Worth It?

It seems some cities are rushing into adapting to a 4-day work week because of budget concerns.  Yet, sometimes the cost savings are very small.  Instead, these cities use organizational values, rather than money, to make the case for adopting or rejecting a 4-day work week schedule.

In March 2009, the City of Palmdale in Palmdale, Calif. switched many of their departments to a 4/10 work schedule, but expect to only save $10,000. You can access the copy of their press release here. Cost savings is not the main reason why they switched, however. They say the change is primarily to “boost morale” and improve job satisfaction, with cost savings as a secondary benefit.

The city of Hoquiam, Washington recently abandoned their attempt at switching to a 4-day work week because the cost saving benefits did not outweigh the decreased availability of services provided to the public.

So, Hoquiam did not switch to a 4-day work week because they value keeping services available to the public. Palmdale did switch because it values employee satisfaction. It might be interesting to consider organizational values when determining if a 4-day work week is an option for a particular agency.