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Ideas For You

These suggestions, submitted by TUSD staff, parents, students, and community members, can help the district save money and improve services:

• Reuse paycheck envelopes or staple paychecks shut to eliminate envelope use .
• Create a quiet area at your school so that children may relax at recess and lunch.
• Create a "Thinking Garden" at your school, a quiet place where children can spend reflective time. Investigate grant funding through Educational Enrichment Foundation's mini-grants or Heritage grants.
• Sites can order as many recycling bins as needed upon request. Contact Tina Cook (tina.cook@tusd1.org) for more information.
• Assign a site coordinator to coordinate recycling, with the goal of achieving 50% of waste to be recycled.
• Submit your used HP or Lexmark printer cartridge to Office Max and receive a full ream of paper free of charge!
• Rather than having costly shredding services established at your site, send bulk shredding through the Asset Warehouse at 2050 E. Winsett St. Your staff can deliver it or contact Rey Bussari (520-225-4626) to initiate a Property Control Work Order for pick up.
• Your school site can choose to adopt a uniform policy. See Policy JICA (in MS Word | in Adobe PDF) and Regulation JICA-R (in MS Word | in Adobe PDF) for more information.
• Create an academic booster club at your school.
• Ask for generic drugs when filling prescriptions. Order your pharmaceuticals by mail when an option, and reduce your healthcare usage by only going to the doctor when necessary.
• Save toner by printing in draft mode.
• Reduce paper usage; copy double-sided. To photocopy one piece of paper per student per day costs the district $75,000.
• Reduce use of colored paper.
• Send and store information by email if possible.
• Printers should not be used as copiers.
• All printing should be done at the TUSD Print Shop, not outsourced. Bids are in place for the lowest cost if the print shop cannot fulfill the order.
• All employees should receive paycheck through direct deposit.
• Use district cell phones wisely.
  1. Only use your district cell phone for work-related purposes.
  2. If a landline is available, use it instead of your district cell phone.
  3. Calls from district cell phone to district cell phone do not incur charges.
  4. Do not text message unless you are preauthorized to do so.
  5. Do not call *411 for information under any circumstance.
  6. School emergency phones are to stay at the school site at all times and are only to be used for work-related calls if your landline is down.
• Don't use two-pocket folders at meetings. These can be difficult for meeting attendants to re-use and often are simply stored in a drawer. Instead, simply provide your flyers or hand-outs stapled or loose. Participants can then file them in their own folders or notebooks when they return to the office.
• Place transparent tape over the bar code on your time card to prevent wear and tear. The bar code can be read through the tape.
• Email school announcements to employees with email accounts. Do not follow up with a hard-copy. If you will be emailing more than 10 recipients, rather than sending attachments, send the document or other file to the webmaster for posting on the Intranet, then send the link in your email message.
• Turn off all lights and computers when not in use.
• Send one copy per family of parent newsletters and announcements.
• Reduce, re-use, recycle. (For more information, see the REAP website.)
• Participate in the REAP program.
• Donate unused supplies to other school in need.
• Recycle inkjet and toner cartridges.
• Schools can create a wish list for parents of supplies that are needed.
• Fundrasing ideas are available on this independent School Fundraising Programs web site.