A newly-adopted district program is saving your child's school thousands of dollars a year.
Hillsborough County Schools recently started using Peachjar, an online program that allows teachers to upload timely information about important school-approved programs like soccer, Girl Scouts & even 529 plans! It's allowed many Hillsborough schools to cut down the majority of the paper they print.
Before, students were coming home with dozens of printed sheets of paper.
"You would see flyers in the recycling bin in 50, 100 stacks," said Jamie Miller, a success coach at Lennard High School. "Now, the flyers are not there anymore because they are all electronic."
"I would have to take home lots of flyers, almost every day," said Melanie Aponte, a Lennard High School student. "And it kind of got stressful because all the flyers kept getting all around. I would lose some that were important."
Since Hillsborough County Schools started using Peachjar August 1, district leaders said they have saved a lot of money as well as trees.
Factoring in 158,550 subscribers to Peachjar, the district has saved 16,759,753 sheets of paper., district leaders said. That's about 2011 trees saved.
At 8,333 sheets of paper per tree, and 2.5¢ per copy, the estimated cost savings for district and community is around $418,993.83.
"You could take that money you put toward extra people in the system who can help our kids in need," Miller said.
ABC Action News broke down the numbers even further and found that $418,000 would pay the average yearly salary of about 10 elementary school teachers.
While some students may be taking home some printed homework or worksheets, the majority of the printed flyers and information is supposed to be sent through Peachjar, district representatives said.
Scholarship opportunities are also being uploaded to Peachjar.
Peachjar is in schools all across Hillsborough County Schools.
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