Central Supply answers all USD 253 needs

The Central Supply crew huddles before the start of another day. At the left, Bob Bell, who shares his time equally between duties as the "pony" driver and driving a school bus, waits for any last-minute instructions. To the rear, Keith Peres closes up a box of supplies going to one of the district buildings. To the right, Dan Freeman answers a question Jan Mercer has about an order.

The Central Supply crew huddles before the start of another day. At the left, Bob Bell, who shares his time equally between duties as the "pony" driver and driving a school bus, waits for any last-minute instructions. To the rear, Keith Peres closes up a box of supplies going to one of the district buildings. To the right, Dan Freeman answers a question Jan Mercer has about an order.

Ask Dan Freeman what it takes to keep a school district running and he might tell you it just takes a lot of paper.

Freeman, the district supply supervisor for the Emporia Public Schools, said that a major item his staff deals with is paper.

"We have copier paper, drawing paper, craft paper, three kinds of butcher paper in rolls, writing paper, paper towels, paper plates and napkis and toilet paper, in addition to lots of forms," he said.

Freeman estimated that last year the Emporia school district consumed approximately 15 million sheets of copier paper alone. That's 150 tons, 75 pallets, 3,000 cases, 30,000 reams, of plain paper, white and colored. If you laid all 15 million sheets end to end, you would pave a narrow roadway to New York City - and back. Or you would have 4,583,333 yards, the equivalent of 45,833 football fields laid end to end.

This, of course, does not include all the other papers his department handles. And that's just the paper. His staff - the equivalent of three and a half full-time positions, including himself - offers more than 1,100 items in its supplies catalog, everything from chalk to erasers, snow shovels to floor wax, footballs to bandages. Or, as Freeman puts it, "We supply everything from A to Z, adhesives to Zip-loc bags." Items range in complexity from printer cartridges to the simple paper clip, of which Central Supply delivered about 1.5 million to the district in a recent six-month period.

Freeman said, for many items, he probably stocks more inventory than many of the popular office supply outlets, most of which cannot compete with him on price.

"By buying in these quantities on most of our paper products, our vendors can place our orders directly with the paper mill," he said. "When we can order by the truckload directly from the mill, we can really stretch the district's dollars."

The way school district funding works makes managing all this inventory no mean feat, according to Freeman.

These pallets of photocopier paper, weighing in at 1 ton apiece, represent only a small fraction of the 75 pallets the school district uses in a year, and an even smaller fraction of all the materials Central Supply provides Emporia Public Schools.

"We're allowed about $45,000 at the start of the year to buy supplies," he said. "Over the course of the year we turn that into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Based on experience, we try to buy the right products in the right amounts we'll need to get us started. Then as the school year goes on, we keep ordering more products as we sell what we have."

Freeman's goal is to break even at the end of the year. But that can be tricky because this year's crop of new teachers may not order the same supplies as the teachers they replaced. Or several teachers might upgrade to new printers, leaving Freeman with an inventory of outmoded toner cartridges for a greatly reduced number of old printers.

Then there's the hat trick of planning and ordering for next year.

"I try to get our buildings to let us know what they'll need well in advance so we can order as early as possible," he said. "This becomes a nationwide thing. Schools from all over the country are ordering back-to-school supplies at the same time. If I wait too late, it can become a real mess."

Over the years, Freeman has tried to get off this schedule by anticipating what teachers will order and how much and placing his orders earlier. However, this shell game can be costly.

"I can't end up with overstock of some products and end the year in the red," he said. Freeman relies on a sixth sense developed during years of retailing before coming to USD 253 to help him with this task.

The loading dock at the new Central Supply facility produced major benefits in terms of efficient handling of materials.

Inventorying and paying for all these supplies is only half the job, of course. Central Supply must deliver all these supplies to its customers in the other buildings. When Central Supply moved in January, it got a big boost in productivity. Now housed in the building behind the district's bus parking bullpen at 2830 W. 12 th Ave. , the department has the facilities it needs to operate efficiently.

"We have plenty of space here to store our products, plus we can unload pallets right off our suppliers' trucks right onto our floor here," Freeman said. "And, we can load out onto our trucks from the other loading dock. That's saved us a lot of time."

In the past, because they had no loading dock and worked in cramped quarters at 620 Constitution, Central Supply staff had to handle most of its inventory by hand, which was not only labor intensive but time consuming.

Bob Bell sort mail into bins in the &quot;pony&quot; truck as he prepares to head out on his 23-mile route. <br />

Besides keeping the entire school district supplied with materials, Central Supply also has responsibility for operating the "pony," or internal mail systemf, which was once apparently dubbed the "pony express" but then shortened to the "pony."

The "pony" driver starts each day at the U.S. Post Office downtown where he picks up the mail. He then goes first to the Board of Education offices at 501 Merchant and then to each building in the district, a total 22 stops over 23 miles in about four hours. Next to e-mail, the "pony" is a major means of communicating within the district.

On top of supply and the "pony," Central Supply also handles all the old textbooks for the district, orders all the new uniforms for employees in Central Supply, Maintenance and custodial staff, handles all the district's hazardous waste, trains employees in handling hazardous waste and manages the 60 photocopiers in the district and the toner each needs.

That means, of course, that when those copiers are running smoothly and making beautiful images, the orders for more paper is going to come soon and the cycle starts all over again! And so the days go at Central Supply.

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