Bergenfield Board of Education goes paperless

In an effort to create a more sustainable and cost-effective work environment the Bergenfield Board of Education has passed a resolution to go paperless. The five members of the school board and the four-member administrative cabinet will leave paper operations behind in exchange for laptops and wireless mice reports NorthJersey.com. The initiative, passed in April and publicly announced this month, will provide board members with the same laptops used by their students.

"The board wanted to focus on reducing the amount of paper being used for meetings," said Christopher Tully, business administrator for the board, "Eliminate the gas to transport the paper documents to [trustees'] homes and become more efficient with the entire document management process."

Tully believes that employees were duplicating processes, and consequently wasting time, due to the slow and mistake-prone nature of paper based operations, according to NorthJersey.com. This effort in business process automation is intended to phase out the need for multiple copies of the same document, and reprinting revisions. Pursuant to that GoPaperless Solutions states that a digitized office can reduce costs and open up floor space, secure backup documents, increase productivity and communicate a professional image.

"The changes are then visible in real time," Tully said. "Without having to reproduce all of the documents over again, or schedule another physical delivery to the homes of board members via a gas-driven vehicle."

The document management software the board will use costs $600 per month, but he believes that they will break even because of the long-term savings inherent in dematerialization, according to NorthJersey.com. The reduction of waste, in addition to manufacturing and transportation induced pollution, and in conjunction with the hours saved, will be the true reward. The average U.S. office worker will print 10,000 pages annually according to GoPaperless Solutions, via data from the Environmental Protection Agency. A fact made more significant by the fact that the pulp and paper industry is the second largest consumer of energy in the United States.

Each school board member was trained for an hour on the new content management service, while Tully and his staff received 15 hours of training. Training for the software is available for free online as well.

New Jersey also has a certification program for municipalities seeking to go green and save funds through grants, called Sustainable Jersey, NorthJersey.com reports. Bergenfield has consistently made efforts to move in a more sustainable direction and has received bronze certification.

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