Posted in response to a question from earlier this week: so why does the school have its own purchasing department, if it pays for the city's?
It doesn't.
The schools don't have a purchasing department; all school requisitions ultimately go through the city purchasing department. However, it is only the requisitions--the purchase orders and (as necessary) bids--that are done by the city. The rest of the work: the consolidation (as schools often order the same things), verification of delivery, processing, delivery, and all the associated record keeping, are done by the Materials Management Department. As they manage materials for 44 schools, 24,000 students, and all associated staff and faculty, it is certainly a full job. And as it is only the P.O. and bids processed by the city, one could easily argue that the schools don't warrant paying 51% of that bill.
There are two IT departments. The schools' department manages the 6000 computers owned by the schools, manages the E-rate, grant, and other funding, maintains all the databases and data systems associated with the district (that's everything from attendance to test scores to pay records), maintain the website, and manage all electronic submissions to the state. The city does none of that for the schools (I'm not sure that the city IT has anything to do with school IT; I can ask).
The short answer is: there isn't a replication here. There's a handoff on the purchasing, and no relation on the IT.
arguably, the school should hand off the IT function to the city as it pays for more than 50 percent of the city's IT department. What's special about maintaining desktops or E-rate?
ReplyDeleteDoes Materials Management manage the thousands of boxed up textbooks and reference books in the city schools?
there are seven positions in materials management and they don't cut purchase orders or get quotes or write bid specifications?
ReplyDeletewhy not put them in the purchasing department and you would only have to spend 51% percent as administrative services