Nordson Corporation who is headquartered in Westlake and had been supportive of our efforts to
implement the IB Programme. Nordson agreed to pay the cost of the IB Coordinator through a
sponsorship further reducing the cost. We met again with our partner districts and asked all to seek
sponsorships and write grants and to contribute to the group to drive down the cost for the entire
consortium. The Martha Holden Jennings Foundation approved a grant for $40,000 and another district
was able to secure a small sponsorship. Our district applied for a grant from the Governor’s new
initiative to support innovative programs. The International Baccalaureate Diploma program project at
Westlake High School was one of only 39 projects chosen for funding from the State’s Local
Government Innovation Fund. The $100,000 grant was awarded for our efforts to share resources with
neighboring districts. This very competitive grant was not limited to school districts, but any
government entity. Only four schools received Innovative grants. After securing approximately
$160,000 in outside funds to help support the IB Programme, each district paid less than $9,000 to
participate.
While the HS IB project was likely our most innovative action taken, a number of other partnerships,
grants, consortiums, shared services, advertising opportunities and community volunteer efforts have
helped support our pursuit of Educating for Excellence while accounting for major budget cuts. Our
district worked through our CIP process to develop a partnership advisory committee. This committee
continues to ensure better partnerships through establishing an understanding of how our relationships
with community and regional entities can be mutually beneficial.
We continually seek out other non-traditional avenues to better utilize resources. Examples include:
• Participating in a Suburban Healthcare Consortium to reduce health insurance costs;
• Using purchasing cooperatives for significant savings on: bus purchases, natural gas, telephone/email
notification discounts, fiber
installation, internet connectivity, fiscal/library services, Power School, web filter equipment, software
purchases, insurance premiums,
vocational programming,transportation consolidation, and alternative school programming.
• Being attentive to other forms of savings as demonstrated through having recently been recognized by
Ohio School Plan (OSP) with
the Best Practices Award for our its efforts in actively controlling risk.
While taking action because of budget cuts has never been easy, ours have been better instituted because
of the clear direction provided through our CIP process. Our community knows the all decisions,
particularly the tough ones, are made as part of our best effort to utilize the resources available to best
meet our district’s purpose and goals.
Nominations:
Vice president Board of Education
Dr. Daniel J. Keenan Jr. will be an excellent National Superintendent of the Year for 2014 because of his
leadership within our school district as well as his work advocating for our district and public schools
statewide. His ability to give life to our school district’s mission statement and his ability to help our
8 / 12
