It might not seem like passing out worksheets in a single classroom creates an unusually large amount of paper waste. However, once you start considering factors like the number of classrooms in the school, the days in the school year, and the overall number of schools in the U.S., the use of paper in educational environments adds up quickly.
Here, we’ll dig into statistics on paper use in schools, the calculated costs of that paper consumption, and how to reduce paper use in schools with the help of scanning and digital education records. Read on or watch the video at the end of the post to learn more.
How Much Paper Schools Are Using
Educational institutions are typically paper-heavy environments. From handwriting practice and homework to student records and gradebooks, they produce a staggering amount of paper. On average, a typical school will use nearly 2,000 sheets of paper per day. Throughout a full school year (~160 days), that school will chew through over 320,000 sheets of paper.
With roughly 100,000 schools in the U.S., this means that, all together, schools are consuming as much as 32 billion sheets of paper per year. Talk about a staggering amount of paper.
How Much It Costs Schools to Use Paper
The average cost of a sheet of paper is roughly five cents. For a school that uses 2,000 sheets per day and 320,000 sheets in a year, they can expect to spend roughly $100 per day or $16,000 per year. For the U.S. as a whole, paper costs can run as high as $1.6 billion annually.
How to Reduce Paper Use
Reducing paper use might seem like a big undertaking, especially for large schools with many students. But starting small can help you ramp up the transition from paper to digital faster than you might think.
To start cutting the recurring costs of using paper, scanning records is a one-time cost that removes the need to use more paper for future copies. Common files educational institutions can scan include:
- General and special education files
- Student transcripts
- Faculty/personnel files and HR records
- Financial aid applications and files
- Student registrations, schedules, and admissions
- Medical records
- Student publications (yearbook/newspaper)
- Accounting and purchasing records
The Benefits of Digitizing School Records
Aside from reducing paper use, digital education files can also help boost productivity and save time, money, and the space otherwise needed to manage paper records. Digital records also help improve security, and ensure compliance with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Save Money and Resources
With electronic education records, the cost is fairly straightforward. On average, scanning costs roughly 7–12 cents per page. While not always the case, most providers lower the cost per page the larger your project and page count is. Other cost factors to consider include whether the files are single or double-sided, if prep work like staple removal is needed, or if you want the scanning to be done on- or off-site.
Save Time and Boost Productivity
With digital records, you can save a lot of time, which helps to boost productivity overall. Scanned files are indexed as they’re implemented in document management systems (DMS) or cloud storage servers. This means records can be organized by things like file name and date, and quickly tracked down by keyword search. Version control is easier to manage as well. With the most recent version readily available, you can avoid duplicates and, in turn, time and resources.
Digital records also reduce physical storage space. While a one-terabyte hard drive can hold 6.5 million document pages and costs $50, a four-drawer file cabinet only holds 10,000–12,000 files, takes up nine square feet of floor space, and can cost upwards of $1,500. Once converted, your records won’t need costly file folders, file cabinets, or storage rooms to be maintained. You’ll also gain back time used to re-file records, which can be repurposed for more priority projects.
Increase Data Security
It’s a fact that physical records introduce more risk than digital ones. For all industries, data security and disaster preparedness are necessities. To reduce risk, organizations in all industries, including education, should consider the shift to digital recordkeeping.
Digital files benefit from additional security that not only prevents physical theft, but also protects from external risks like hacking or natural disasters like fire and flood. With added protections like file encryption, tiered access controls, and regular, automated data backups, your institution can prepare for and mitigate multiple types of risk.
Maintain Regulatory Compliance
Educational institutions are required to comply with a number of laws and regulations in regards to data security. FERPA is one of these regulations. According to FERPA, schools that receive funds from the U.S. Department of Education can’t disclose student information without the consent of the parents or student after they’ve turned 18 years of age.
When schools are at risk of FERPA noncompliance, it’s often because they’ve either lost school records or they’re storing and sharing them without proper security protocols in place. Going digital with school records can help avoid noncompliance with FERPA and other regulations. With an experienced document management partner, records can be encrypted, password-protected, and indexed in a system that organizes and sorts them by name, date, and type.
School Records Scanning With Record Nations
Educational environments have always generated large volumes of paper. And while that may continue to be true, educational professionals can start getting ahead of the cost and space by going digital. The process can be straightforward with the right provider.
At Record Nations, we partner with a nationwide network of records scanning and storage providers in order to help schools save on paper costs and make the transition from paper to digital school records. Whether you’re in Reno, Richmond, or somewhere in between, we’ll connect you with records management experts who can support your school throughout the process. Simply fill out the form, give us a call at (866) 385-3706, or contact us directly using our live chat.
