Dialogue > Article > Culture Of Communication

Cut costs. Maintain services. And preserve your culture. That was the mandate delivered to Brent Hall, executive director of Discovery Academy, by the school’s board of directors recently. The therapeutic boarding school, located in Provo, Utah, charges families almost $6,000 (U.S.) a month for tuition.
Despite a rocky economy, Hall found a way to save money while expanding his school’s program. He explains some of his techniques below.

Bring everyone on board
Hall identified and communicated the potential dangers and opportunities in the coming months. He used the information to encourage participation and empower his team.

If another school went out of business or if a program was considering 20 per cent salary reductions, his staff knew about it. Seeing a nearby competing school go under, Hall’s staff were looking for improvements in their own program.
“We were surviving, in part, because of our price point,” Hall says. “We asked our staff, ‘How can we run leaner and offer more services?’”

Go where the money is spent
“Your accounting team may be the worst people to ask for savings ideas because they are the farthest removed,” Hall suggests. “Go to the level where the spending happens and you’ll be amazed at the great ideas people will come up with.”

The goal is not to save 50 per cent on something that costs $10. Instead, look to save three per cent on a monthly expenditure of $15,000, for example.
“Line up all your expenditures and see which ones you have control of. Start looking at your variable costs,” Hall continues.

Negotiate with vendors
“Discovery Academy typically spends about $20,000 monthly on food, and we split that money between three vendors,” Hall says. “One of them agreed to give us a three per cent price reduction in exchange for doing all our buying with that company. We’re saving money and there hasn’t been any decrease in product quality or service.”

With that success in mind, Hall went to his office products vendors, resulting in a streamlined buying process and savings of 30 per cent. “We had been using four vendors for office and school supplies and art materials. We gave vendors an opportunity to renegotiate their prices in exchange for an exclusive buying arrangement,” he explains.

Portion control
As a boarding school that feeds about 100 students and staff, huge portions of food often ended up in the trash, no matter how careful the meal preparation.

Since all appetites are not created equal, the receptionist suggested students start out with smaller servings and be allowed extra helpings if they desire.

That simple change has saved as much as one-third on food costs, without any hungry students, Hall says. It has also fostered a culture of communication by showing employees their ideas are welcome and valuable.

Communication
Since most employees had cellphones prior to joining the academy, Hall decided there was no sense in issuing a school cellphone. Instead, he offers staff a $40 cellphone expense reimbursement each month.

“Our staff loves the fact the company pays part of their monthly bill, and we save almost 50 per cent over the cost of purchasing new phones and plans for company use,” he says.

Another savings strategy has been to pool corporate cellphone minutes. That way if one teacher uses less than their allotted minutes and another uses more, the company is not penalized with extra charges, he says.

Computers are also squeezed to get the maximum use. When a computer breaks, in-house IT personnel refurbish it and send it to a program or person who doesn’t require a machine with so many features. The school is able to bump each computer down to new users at least twice before it’s finally deemed useless.

Half-filled classes cost the same as full classes
Hall also turned to Discovery Academy’s teaching staff for solutions on how to streamline academics.
“None of our classes have more than 14 students,” he says. “Our teachers suggested not creating any new classes until each of the existing classes hits that ceiling. When that happens, we create a new class, dropping student numbers to 12 in every class.”

“We’ve also used this as an opportunity to review which students may be therapeutically in line for coed learning communities versus single gender,” Hall adds.

The resulting shift temporarily eliminated one teaching position. Hall rehired the teacher a few months later when enrolment rose again.

Parent portal
With a webmaster and IT support personnel already on the payroll, Discovery Academy expanded its Internet offerings. The school developed a way for parents to log into a secure network and get daily reports on academic progress and therapeutic notes and even view recent photos. Parents can also communicate online with teachers and therapists.
Adding this extra service for parents and educational consultants cost little and provides a huge benefit to the school’s clientele. Hall says he now has more time to train and manage his staff.

“A lot of the questions from parents I was fielding by telephone before are now answered on the Parent Portal. I don’t really get a lot of praise from parents about this system, but I certainly avoid lot of pain,” he says.

Experiential opportunities
Hall takes full advantage of resources that are right in his own backyard. “Our academic staff has multiple inroads with community experts, who come to lecture and demonstrate on a variety of topics,” he says. “Like the doctor who brings part of a cadaver to show students the effects of tobacco smoke on the lungs. Community experts with a passion make the best presenters. People are happy to come and there is no expectation of payment.”

Clubs are another way the therapeutic school increases its experiential offerings. Residential director Laura Elliker asked her staff if they would be interested in sharing their hobbies with students by creating a club.

Throughout their normal workday, staff are allowed blocks of time for club meetings. Since employees are already on the clock, it costs the school nothing to offer extracurricular clubs and learning activities.

Reaping and sewing
“We think teens are the happiest when they have a way to contribute to the community around them,” Hall explains.
Graduate students work with their teams on projects like mowing lawns, pulling weeds or planting flowers. Sometimes students will repaint a room or help with snow removal, he says.

Hall admits it would be easier to outsource the work and he was worried at first over how parents might react to their children performing menial tasks. But parents have been very supportive and recognize the school is trying to build teens, not just do yard work, he says.

Besides saving the school more than $1,000 a month, Hall says the therapeutic value of the work-ethic groups is huge. And students take increased pride in their surroundings.

Not the same old, same old
A dedicated school therapist who is also a professional actor suggested adding drama therapy to Discovery Academy’s experiential offerings. The culmination of that therapy would be the school play that is already performed every year.
“We didn’t add to his salary or take away from what we were already doing,” Hall explains. “We shifted our focus and found a way to make what we had even better.”

Hall says the recent economic turbulence has given him and his staff an opportunity to make improvements by looking at everything through fresh eyes. “We’ve really tried to keep the human element, the unique part of Discovery’s culture that makes us who we are,” Hall says. “I think that’s helped our staff feel empowered, not vulnerable, as we ride out the economic storm together.”