School Board goes paperless for meetings

With the advent of digital technology, a number of Wrangell’s public and governmental agencies are going “paperless” in an effort to streamline operations, save costs and improve efficiency.

One of the main users of digital records technology in town is the Wrangell Medical Center – though the Wrangell Public Schools District can now be counted among such users of this next-generation standard for meetings.

According to superintendent Rich Rhodes, a paperless, web-based system known as BoardDocs LT has been adopted by the district as a way for the school board to “distribute documents associated with board meetings more quickly and efficiently, at a dramatically reduced cost to the district.”

The system will allow not only the board, but also the public, to access documents and information related to regular and special meetings of the board via the Internet. All documents associated with meetings are archived as well and can be accessed at any time after the meeting occurs.

“Under the old paper system, meeting packets could not be distributed until every document had been prepared, submitted and approved,” Rhodes stated. “Once all the documents were submitted, staff members would typically spend two days assembling the documents into packets before distributing them to board members.”

Board president Susan Eagle said the system would save money for the district and assist the board members in receiving the most up-to-date information.

“Sometimes our board packets would run in excess of 100 pages,” she said. “So, moving away from the paper-based system to digital is going to show a great deal of cost savings. It also allows us to see updates almost instantly instead of having to wait for the packet to come out.”