School supplies can cost millions

Seven million pints of milk -- half white, half chocolate.

That's what Granite School District students are expected to consume in the first six months of the upcoming school year, and that's what the Granite purchasing department recently dished out $748,300 to buy. Along with the milk, Granite also bought 125,000 pounds of salad mix, 45,000 pounds of shredded lettuce, 360,000 corn dogs, 1,219,200 pizza slices and 2,348 gallons of hand soap.

It takes a lot more than pencils to run a school district. Especially for Granite and Jordan, the state's two largest districts, which include nearly one-third of Utah's students.

The Jordan School District, for example, produces between 20,000 and 30,000 purchase orders in a typical year and processes approximately $80 million in bids from companies wanting to fill those orders.

"Many people don't recognize the volume of purchases we make," said Richard Field, Jordan's director of purchasing. "We do buy an enormous number of items."

That enormous number includes the expected school supplies -- Jordan recently spent $46,373 on pencils, $26,490 on glue and glue dispensers and $14,169 on art brushes and paint -- as well as the unexpected. Jordan recently paid $56,696 for 205 tons of bulk fertilizer, $25,809 for 570 tons of salt and $10,513 for 12,400 vacuum bags.

Vacuum bags?

"We do this every day, so we don't often stop to think what the unusual purchases are," Field said.

Gary Hansen, director of purchasing for Granite, said purchasers do their best to keep warehouses stocked with necessary supplies without keeping too much stock. But keeping a warehouse stocked with a few month's supply of materials requires a lot. Granite recently spent $142,876 on a six-month supply of white multi-purpose paper (nearly 40 million sheets) and $29,508 on toilet paper (750 cases of two-ply and 1,000 cases of one-ply).

To find a balance between having enough and not having too much, district purchasers analyze inventories and compile usage-trend reports. To find a balance between choosing low-priced suppliers and choosing quality products, they check the marketplace for what Hansen called "the lowest responsible bidders."

"People have the mistaken idea that we just buy low bid, but we focus on the best value, not just the lowest price," Field said. "We don't want to buy a pencil that isn't going to work well, we want to buy a pencil that really works well and fits the needs of the students."

But Field said the district is not spending extravagantly.

"There's a real sense of honesty and fair play in the district, and the administration has a strong commitment to spend public funds in the right way," he said.

For purchases over $10,000, both Jordan and Granite use formal public bids to seek out the best value. Purchases over $20,000 must be approved by the Board of Education.

"One thing most people don't recognize is how much goes into the purchasing process," Field said. "A teacher says, 'buying, that's easy to do,' but they don't recognize all the state laws in place that require us to jump through a lot of hoops just to ensure a sense of fair play."

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