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Guidelines for outsourcing school support services
Kentucky School Advocate
October 2016
In their work, “Guide to Contracting Out School Support Services: Good for the School? Good for the Community,” William J. Mathis and Lorna Jimerson recommend that school leaders take several steps before making a decision on contracting out a service.
• Analyze why outsourcing is being considered and whether the issues prompting it might be better resolved in house.
• Analyze all costs involved in contractor proposals including administrative, indirect and hidden.
• Weigh the “social costs,” such as economic effect on employees and community and possible fallout in school-community relations.
• Find out if there are enough qualified bidders to be competitive.
Once a decision has been made to outsource, steps to take include using an independent resource to help develop a request for proposals and not a vendor’s model, checking with other districts about the contractor’s performance in addition to the listed references, and parse cancellation clauses.
To read the full report, click here.