Tech School Operating Committee to Review Advertising Expenditures
- Joint Operating Committee members of Lenape Tech - including representatives from Armstrong, Freeport, Apollo-Ridge and Leechburg school districts - met August 4 and agreed to review advertising costs to promote the school.
by Jonathan Weaver
Two months after a regional technical school approved their fiscal year budget, committee members are trying to cut back on expenses.
Joint Operating Committee members of Lenape Technical School will begin reviewing advertising expenditures.
Committee Chairperson Meredith Christy, representing the Freeport Area School District, called for the review after school calendars were made for families and newsletters were mailed out recently.
“We spent $12,200 to print the newsletter to get it ready, mail it,” Christy said. “Every so-often, we do review the money we are spending on advertising, newsletters and all that to figure out the total dollars spending, and are we getting our monies worth.”
Lenape Tech Administrative Director Dawn Kocher-Taylor said school officials have already begun cutting back.
“We reduced our newsletter from 2-to-1, and the newsletter you saw this time, has a new format – it was changed to a magazine format – and that was by my design because my step is to solicit other non-profit organizations who have to cut costs -just like the school’s- to put their information in that newsletter,” Kocher-Taylor said. “It would be a collaborative venture and they would bear some of the cost, which would reduce the cost to us.”
Examples of those non-profits include foundations, tourist bureaus and the YMCA.
Students from Armstrong, Freeport, Apollo-Ridge and Leechburg School Districts are welcome to enroll in Lenape Tech courses, and Kocher-Taylor said the newsletter would benefit all those areas.
“That goes to every postal address in all of your school districts, so it would be a very unique way for them to get their message out to a larger population, and it would help all of us to lower our costs,” Kocher-Taylor continued.
Christy asked for the total advertising costs through the 2011 fiscal year to also be calculated so that committee members can compare expenditures.
Kocher-Taylor said advertising cuts have and will be made when the time is right.
“We’ve reduced the number of newsletters, we’ve cut back on any sort of cable advertising we used to do, billboard advertising and radio advertising that existed when I got here – we have made cuts all along when it was the right thing to do,” Kocher-Taylor said.
In other Lenape Tech news, committee members also officially hired Morgan Scheetz to teach math during the upcoming school year at a wage of $38,101.78 within the Step 1 – bachelor’s scale. Instructional Assistant, Tawni Schall, was furloughed.
Students report for classes August 18.
The Joint Operating Committee will next meeting September 15 at 7PM.