Co-ops also save time by handling the request-for-proposal process and assisting with compliance reporting in the wake of increased federal nutrition requirements.

In addition, co-ops track vendor performance and offer forums for sharing best practices.

The following snapshots describe how co-ops save money and prioritize healthy eating in different regions of the country.

Redirected savings

Introducing a nutrition software platform increased student participation during breakfast and lunch by 10 percent in one year at rural Staples-Motley ISD 2170 (1,150 students) in Minnesota.

SIDEBAR: Savings snapshots

But earlier, when Shelly Miller took over as director of nutritional services, new federal nutrition guidelines were making it tough for the district’s distributor to get the healthier fare.

“We were really struggling with being able to offer good menu items, and I had to keep going back to the district office for more money because it was costing us more than what we had projected” Miller says.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Strength in numbers for charter schools

So Miller reached out to Sourcewell, a national public service cooperative that her district used for other types of purchasing.

Sourcewell offers its 50,000 members access to large, competitively bid contracts that can save a school district thousands of dollars per year.

Sourcewell helped Staples-Motley bid on a new distribution deal and also supplied Miller with NutriStudents K-12, a software platform that streamlines the management of food service programs.

NutriStudents K-12 has developed more than 100 school menus that meet federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act guidelines.

“Previously, I was taking menus home at night because I had to work on calorie counts, fat counts and sodium” Miller says.

NutriStudents K-12’s compliance reports make state audits much easier to complete. Miller also says her budget problems have abated���in part because more students buy lunch���and she has redirected savings.

“I am able to buy equipment that I previously wouldn’t have been able to” she says. “This year, I bought two brand-new milk coolers. There is always maintenance that is unforeseen, so it helps to have that cushion in your fund balance.”

Menu mentoring

When a district is considering joining the Northern Illinois Independent Purchasing Cooperative (NIIPC), co-founder Micheline Piekarski discusses the potential savings.

“I ask them to give me 20 or 30 items with the prices they have been paying, and I send them back the co-op prices for the same items” says Piekarski, director of food services at Oak Park & River Forest High School near Chicago.

“In general, there is a 5 to 7 percent savings in joining.”

NIIPC, which comprises 75 districts serving more than 200,000 students, bids directly with vendors on the 600 most popular items. (Other items are ordered by districts at cost, plus a fixed fee charged by the distributor.)

Everything is taste tested by students, and an item must earn an 85 percent approval rating to make the bid.

“Doing bids correctly, ethically and legally takes a lot of work for a small district” Piekarski says. “We have a bid group that does a lot of the work for them. We not only have a distributor bid, but also a bread bid, milk bid, produce bid and vending bid.”

Many NIIPC members plan menus with a web-based program called Heartland Mosaic, which comes configured with the latest US91心頭 child nutrition database.

To get more district food-service directors involved in the bidding process, NIIPC has created an advisory board of 15 members and does longer-term strategic planning every three to five years.

It also offers professional development opportunities. For instance, NIIPC created a webinar on how to use the Heartland Mosaic software.

What you would have paid

Rural districts sometimes have a hard time hiring staff, and that includes food-service workers.

“When and if these positions are filled, their expertise is not bidding food, it is preparing food for the kids they serve every day” says Craig Peterson, director of Nebraska’s statewide ESUCC Cooperative Purchasing service.

The co-op, which covers 17 educational service units and about 300,000 students, negotiates three-year contracts in which a prime vendor offers products to the schools at prices established through a bidding process.

A 1 percent rebate is given to schools that meet an annual spending commitment. There are no upfront costs, out-of-pocket fees or penalties.

The co-op has stepped up its legal vetting of bids as federal and state nutrition requirements have become stricter, he says.

ESUCC also handles documentation for US91心頭 and Nebraska Department of Education compliance reviews, and tracks savings.

“One data point we utilize is the list cost or normal pricing that a member would have been charged if they did not participate in the program” he says.

Four different hot dogs

Donna Davis has seen school food-purchasing co-ops from many angles. For 22 years, she worked for a broker selling food to individual districts and co-ops.

Then in 2013, she got involved with 37 Texas districts that broke away from their co-op to form the nonprofit School Purchasing Alliance (SPA).

While most co-ops are run by a government entity or intergovernmental agreement, SPA is managed under contract by Davis’ one-woman business, Houston-based Marketplace Alliance LLC.

“They hired me because I knew the other side of the business and knew how to make deals” she says. Davis showed members that they were buying 4,000 items and not taking enough advantage of the power of their group purchase.

“They were buying four different hot dogs and four different dinner rolls” she says. “I said, ‘Let’s figure out what the students like, and then let me bargain.'”

Although SPA buys more than 2,000 items, it spends most of its revenue on 500 items. Topping the list: 8-ounce bottles of water, of which the alliance buys 180,000 cases per year.

“Those high-dollar-volume items are the ones I want to make sure we are getting the best price on” she says.

David Raths is a Philadelphia-based writer who regularly covers edtech.

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At the time, James Graham was working as director of operations for KIPP, a charter management organization running eight schools in the city.

In the wake of the storm, the state looked to bigger charter management organizations such as KIPP to help single-site or small, multisite schools with transportation, nutrition and facilities management, and Graham was put in charge of food services.

Smaller charter organizations manage food programs by folding them under a larger School Food Authority so the economies of scale benefit them all, Graham says.

LINK TO MAIN ARTICLE: A financial feast for K12 schools

If a charter school opened with just a single grade, it would have only 90 to 120 students. That isn’t very attractive to a large food distributor to bid on providing food services.

“The school would be losing money on every meal that was served” Graham says.

“But as part of KIPP, instead of 90 students, they would be able to be part of a bid on 20,000 students. We were able to drive their prices down, so they were actually seeing savings and able to invest in their equipment and kitchens.”

As more charter districts took advantage of the offering, the Healthy School Food Collaborative was eventually rolled out of KIPP and into its own limited liability company, providing charter districts with management and consulting services.

It handles bid proposals with large food service companies and now works with charter districts in six states, says Graham, the company’s executive director.

The collaborative works to provide all members with the healthy food that students want to eat.

“We didn’t want to set guidelines so stringent that we were forcing them to a corner store to get a bag of Cheetos and a soft drink” Graham says. “We got input from professionals and students about how you make healthy food exciting for the students.”

One approach: Take students out to farms to see how food is produced with the hope that they would be more receptive to trying it. “We are pushing healthy eating, but always with an eye on keeping student participation numbers up.”

Healthy School Food Collaborative’s food standards:

Fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables are served at every lunch��������測no additives or canned food.

No juice is served at lunch.

Daily servings reflect variety over the week.

A vegetarian lunch entree option must be provided if the main entree is not vegetarian.

All grains served must meet the whole-grain-per-serving standard of 0.8 grams.

Whole grains must be first in the product ingredient list.

No mechanically separated meat is allowed.

No serving processed cheese with additives and fillers (e.g., American cheese).

All milk served is rBST free or rGBH free (artificial growth hormone free) as declared by the manufacturer.

No artificial trans fats or hydrogenated oils in ingredient lists.

Only products with little added sugar and natural sugar are allowed.

No deep frying is allowed.

Water is provided daily as a beverage option.

No competitive foods can be sold in the cafeteria or on school premises.

Five percent of the food spend must be local (defined as within a 400-mile radius).

David Raths is a Philadelphia-based writer who regularly covers edtech.

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Students were developing their own learning plans during the rollout of a 1-to-1 iPad program. That is why the district gave Arbogash the title of director of technology and personalized learning.

“Some technology directors are very focused on the back-end IT” says Arbogash, a former teacher. “They may not understand instructional technology and may not come from an education background.”

Besides leading the personalized learning initiative, Arbogash oversees a small IT staff that is responsible for network and mobile device management.

SIDEBAR: Shift keys

“There needs to be someone filling the gap between IT and instructional technology, wherein each side understands the other” she says. “As I lead this department, it is important that I help the tech employees see why we are doing certain things.”

Throughout K12 education, districts moving aggressively into personalized learning covet IT leaders who not only understand instruction, but who also have the technology chops to make decisions about devices and networks.

Traditional IT leaders will struggle to be seen as partners on personalized learning efforts if they aren’t familiar with pedagogical goals or if they act as gatekeepers, restricting what type of software can be used, says Eric Butash, director of operations at the Highlander Institute, a nonprofit organization that helps districts develop blended and personalized learning models.

“Nine times out of 10” he says, “the reason personalized learning does not happen is because some systems or controls are set up by IT leaders who do not understand the transformation happening in the classrooms.”

Linking tech to teaching

At Pickerington Local School District near Columbus, Ohio, Brian Seymour, the director of instructional technology, is part of the team working to blend traditional teaching practices with a digital environment.

For instance, the district, which no longer buys textbooks, will soon offer online classes to prepare high school students for the college experience.

“When the superintendent put me in this position, he said he wanted a direct link between technology and teaching and learning” says Seymour, a former curriculum coordinator and instructional coach. “That has been a main reason why we are having success.”

As Seymour has supported personalized learning and a 1-to-1 initiative, his team has grown from four to 18. It now includes instructional technology, IT support and information management to handle analysis and reporting.

Seymour’s educational technology coordinators also partner with curriculum department employees to focus on specific grade levels.

“Curriculum doesn’t do anything unless they check with us, and we don’t do anything unless we check with them” Seymour says.

Tech leaders also have to measure the effectiveness of digital platforms. Jessica Peters, the associate director of personalized learning for KIPP charter schools in Washington, D.C., selects programs for the blended learning portfolio and develops teacher training sessions for more than 50 software products.

“We have made huge strides in trimming our portfolio down from more than 90 to fewer than 60 products” she says.

“Some products were not being used or not being used effectively” she adds. “Others, even if they were used effectively, weren’t having any impact on student achievement.”

From coordinating to coaching

At Pickerington, the roles of Seymour’s technicians have also changed.

Previously, they worked with carts of iPads or Chromebooks; now they must support individual devices for thousands of students.

That involves setting up procedures for distributing devices; keeping inventory; planning for broken hardware and handing out loaners; and collecting from students some 8,000 devices at the end of the year.

“We got rid of all the general computer labs” Seymour says. “If every student has a device, why do we need computer labs? We don’t have that to worry about anymore.”

At Verona, Arbogash rearranged staffing priorities. Previously, each building had an edtech coordinator and a tech assistant who were spending considerable time fixing technology and implementing software, rather than working with teachers.

This year, their job titles changed to edtech coach, and they guide teachers through the implementation of a learning management system, a collaboration platform and a software program that allows students to detail learning goals and experiences.

Mastering the data

At Pickerington, teachers of the same grade levels meet weekly to discuss student data generated by instructional software.

“Sometimes we have too much data” Seymour admits. “We had to scale back some of our programs to one or two for each subject area at each grade level. That way, the teachers can concentrate on the data from those programs.”

KIPP’s Peters spends significant time mining personalized learning platforms for student-achievement data that she can present to teachers and administrators. Because vendors present the data differently, Peters compiles a data dashboard for KIPP’s educators every week.

“We try to be really consistent about how those are formatted so it is easy for people to look at various assessment platforms in a way that makes sense.”

More administrators are hiring analytics staffers because districts have struggled to leverage the power of data, says Leo Brehm, learning evolution officer at the Central Massachusetts Collaborative, which works with dozens of districts to maximize technology’s impact on learning.

Districts should be able to quickly funnel back assessment data to educators to help steer spending decisions, professional development programs and curriculum adjustments, he says.

“We still struggle with that” Brehm says, “because of a few cultural problems in education around how we handle data, how we interpret it and how we use it to be impactful for students.”

Solving privacy problems

IT leaders sometimes find that student privacy legislation stymies personalized learning efforts, according to a February 2018 report by the National Association of State Boards of Education.

In the report, the association says that New Hampshire’s law includes “heavy-handed provisions” to prevent critical student data from being stored and analyzed in a state longitudinal data system.

“If these tools cannot identify a student’s input or responses, they cannot personalize the education experience” the report states.

Individual district tech leaders also struggle with student privacy provisions in software contracts, says Andrew Wallace, technology director in the South Portland School Department in Maine.

Wallace suggests that IT leaders seek assistance from organizations such as the Student Data Privacy Consortium, which has created a privacy framework that guides districts in

vetting contracts.

Promoting ‘Project Unicorn’

Highlander’s Butash suggests that district tech leaders insist on data interoperability from vendors so it is easier to pull together information from different systems for assessment and reporting.

Districts can require vendors to become compliant with the Ed-Fi Data Standard, a set of rules that enables previously disconnected software applications to connect.

They can also ask vendors to sign the “Project Unicorn” pledge, which commits vendors to focusing on the interoperability of t

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When a few students at Eudora High School in Kansas used an anonymous Twitter account in 2013 to say horrible things about teachers, administrators and other students, there were repercussions in the halls of school the next day, with scuffles breaking out between students.

The district’s social media policy makes it clear that even when cyberbullying takes place off-campus, the district will respond if the acts create a hostile environment at school. The students involved were eventually identified and suspended.

But Eudora also recognizes the positive potential of social media for students, faculty and staff. For instance, Eudora’s local newspaper recently closed and students decided the high school newspaper’s Facebook page could publish sports stories and details on other events, says Kristin Magette, Eudora Schools’ director of communications.

“Teachers are encouraged to experiment and try different things, but they are operating with a net” she says.

Striking a balance

Districts that are large enough to have a communications director on staff often find that person is the logical leader of social media policy planning. They partner with superintendents to bring stakeholders together, consult with legal counsel and present policy recommendations to school boards for approval.

Communications directors also partner with district technology leaders to create cultures that leverage social media and enforce policies on district networks. Scott McLeod, an associate professor of administrative leadership and policy studies at the University of Colorado Denver, says too many districts write policies that have a restrictive and punitive tone.

From 2012 to 2016, McLeod was director of learning, teaching and innovation for the Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency, which serves 40 small districts in northwest Iowa. Many administrators there said they were implementing 1-to-1 programs because they wanted students to be critical thinkers, technologically fluent and globally connected, he says.

“But then the policies, instead of sending the message ‘yes, be powerful and go do meaningful work,’ were all about no, no, no” McLeod says. “The policies are working against some of the stated learning goals.”

Districts with a different mindset focus on empowerment, he adds. Instead of writing an “acceptable use policy” he has encouraged districts to write an “empowered use policy.” It could say, “Yes, you have the right to connect to others to facilitate your learning. Yes, teachers have the right to use online environments to further their career goals” he says.

Protecting student privacy is paramount, but using social media as a contemporary communication tool is also very important, says Brad Saron, superintendent of the Sun Prairie Area School District in Wisconsin.

“I like the concept of ‘yes, and’ when you are trying to figure out the push-pull between those opposite poles” he says. “Yes, we are going to leverage social media as a modern communication tool to inform the public, engage parents and allow students to dialog. We also are going to protect students’ privacy.”

In Eudora, for example, a parent called a principal upset because a coach was posting team practices on a YouTube channel to help the players see their progress over the season. But this parent’s child was embarrassed by the way her body looked in the videos.

Magette���author of the book Embracing Social Media: A Practical Guide to Manage Risk and Leverage Opportunity���says there was nothing objectively inappropriate about posting the videos, but there was a disconnect between intent and reception. “That helps us become more sensitive” she adds.

The videos were shared with the team, but not posted to the rest of the world on social media.

Focus on behavior, not technology

The Radnor Township School District near Philadelphia first created a social media task force of employees at the beginning of the 2012-13 school year. They held focus groups with parents, students and teachers; conducted a district-wide survey; and researched policies in the private sector and other districts.

Still, Radnor faces issues all the time as new social media applications appear. The district’s firewall blocks services such as Facebook, but teachers can override the block to use social media in classrooms.

“You can’t take a broad brush to social media” says Michael Petitti, the district’s director of communications. “You have to examine each service for its merits.”

The district is currently figuring out how students can use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram productively. The district’s website offers several recommendations for teachers. One involves creating Facebook pages for famous historical figures. Petitti’s advice to districts still crafting social media rules is to focus on behavior, not particular technologies.

“When we were creating our policy five years ago, livestreaming wasn’t a thing” he says. “If we had made our policy specific to the services that existed in 2012, we’d be having to rewrite it now.”

Once a policy is created, it is important that it has visibility with faculty and staff.

At every orientation for new teachers in August, Petitti runs a session on social media policy. Part of that is going over rules about when it is inappropriate to speak on behalf of the district on social media platforms.

Off-campus overreach?

Superintendents and principals continue to struggle with how to respond when students misbehave on social media off-campus or post pictures of themselves doing illegal activities such as drinking alcohol.

“The chatter on social media is endless, and it is impossible to monitor 24/7” Radnor’s Petitti says. “But when we hear of things affecting the instructional day, we take action. We communicate with parents, have speakers come in or have support for students in the counseling center.”

But McLeod warns against overreaching when regulating off-campus speech and behavior. The legal standard for taking action is when the behavior disrupts the school environment in a material and substantial way. When administrators over-interpret this they risk punishing a student for minor incidents���and getting into trouble themselves.

For instance, in 2014 a school district in Camden County, New Jersey, agreed to settle a student’s lawsuit by paying legal fees, dropping any punishment and clarifying its social media policy after the student claimed she was punished for tweeting profane comments about her principal in “purely off-campus speech” according to the lawsuit.

Still, several administrators say their responses can serve as a learning opportunity when students make mistakes online. Joe Sanfelippo, superintendent in the Fall Creek School District in Wisconsin, says students on sports teams post updates on Twitter about their activities.

On a recent “senior skip day” teams used foul language to criticize students who didn’t show up for school. The tweets appear on 50-inch monitors in the K12 school.

“I found one of these students and explained that we have 5-year olds who can read that” Sanfelippo says. “He was shocked and five minutes later it was all gone. I didn’t have to call the parents or shut down the account. We treated them with respect. We talked about it and moved on.”

In some districts there is still a lot of fear about even small steps such as creating a school Fac

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