I am writing a budget for a school in California. One subject that has
piqued the administrations interest is the increasing cost of ink. I
would like to find independant research or articles that can give me
some sort of benchmark - for instance, what is the average cost of ink
per student at other schools?

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Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 01 Jun 2006 15:03 PDT

What kind of ink? For printers and copiers or something else? 

It would help if you could tell us more about why your administration
thinks that the cost of ink has gone up. Also, you ask: "What is the
average cost of ink
per student at other schools?" What kinds of schools? Elementary,
secondary, etc.? Public, private, etc.?

The more you can tell us about the context of your questions, the
greater the likelyhood that we will be able to get you the information
you need.

I look forward to your clarification.

~ czh ~

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Clarification of Question by mikeshardware9989-ga on 01 Jun 2006 15:10 PDT

Ink jet and laser ink is the line item in question. The type of school
is K-12, but information from the university level would be helpful if
the former is not available.

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Request for Question Clarification by welte-ga on 13 Jun 2006 07:21 PDT

By "laser ink," do yo mean toner cartridges?

  -welte-ga

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Request for Question Clarification by welte-ga on 16 Jun 2006 06:51 PDT

Would you consider switching all of your ink jet printers to color
laser printers?  The cost per page is lower and speed greater.  Ink
jets are good for photos, but costly to maintain.

    -welte-ga

Is the cost increase due to:
Theft?
Increase in use of ink ?
Increase of use of various colors of ink?
Switching to more, or more varied, or higher cost printers?
Using obsolete printers where the cartriges are rare?

Hey friend - just whatever you do don't even think about contracting
all the school's printing to a place like Kinko's.  The Dallas school
district did that last year and overran their previous internal
printing costs by millions!

Good luck.

Tony

The increase in cost can be due to 2 reasons:

a) You are paying more for 'ink' (lasers dont use ink, but a sort of powder)
b) You are printing more

For a solution for a) use laser printers and/or recycled toners and
cartridges and/or search for a better price. Network laser printers
are cheap in the long run.

For a solution for b) more control over printing is needed. Can
students print without supervision? and teachers? In my school all
printers need special permission before use. only exception is a
teachers room, where printer is located in an office (so there's a
supervision on the content of the printed document).

Hope this helps