LODI — The Medina County School Collaborative Initiative can check one goal off its list: creating a county-wide calendar for school districts in Medina County.

Medina City Schools board member Charlie Freeman said that five of seven school districts in the county — excluding Wadsworth and Black River — reached a consensus on the calendar, which is designed to coordinate programming and initiatives without mismatching vacation days.

“We reached a consensus, but the calendar will have to be adopted by the individual boards (of education) before they can be implemented,” Freeman said.

The calendar will take effect in the 2012-13 school year. Wadsworth likely will adopt the calendar after construction of its high school/community campus is complete in fall 2012.

After the failure of school levies across the county in November, Medina County Schools Superintendent William Koran stressed the importance of schools working together to reduce spending.

“The probability is this collaboration might not take away the need for additional revenues — you just can’t save that much — but what it can do is reduce the amount that needs to be asked for by districts and at the same time make things run more efficiently,” he said.

Tackling the logistics of bidding as a county is the next goal for the Collaborative Initiative, Freeman said.

Districts will bid collectively as a county on paper, fuel, textbooks and other supplies in hopes of getting a better price, he said.

“By working together, rather than a company selling $5,000 worth of items to one school, they could sell $30,000 to a county, so we should be able to get a better price. Even if it is $1 per student, that is still $30,000 in savings,” Koran said.

Freeman said one issue that came up at a meeting Thursday at Lodi Library was whether schools would continue to purchase supplies locally.

He said districts plan to purchase smaller items — like sporting goods — locally, but items like fuel and paper will continue to be bought from large companies.

“We’re not out to alienate some of the very people who support us,” Freeman said.

The Initiative will later work on coordinating curriculum, difficult because teachers within one district often have different lesson plans for a subject.

“Just getting all of the teachers in the mix in Medina Schools takes effort, and we want to multiply that by seven school districts, so it takes a lot of work to get everyone in the same direction,” Freeman said.

Along those lines, Koran said that the schools would like to use all the same textbooks to save money.

“Textbooks are a huge expense, but if we all get on the same cycle renewing textbooks we will set up textbook fairs for all of the vendors to give one presentation … and (Medina County schools) can put in one bid,” he said.

Schools could then become “lending libraries” to one another, so that if one district was short 50 textbooks for one subject, they might be able to borrow from another without having to purchase new ones, Koran said.

Technology, non-education supplies and office equipment rentals could also be purchased in a similar way, he said.

Contact Lisa Hlavinka at (330) 721-4048 or lhlavinka@medina-gazette.com.

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