S C H E N E C T A D Y C O U N T Y Districts partners in savings Consortium forms to cut costs BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter     The school districts in Schenectady County are banding together in a purchasing consortium that could reduce duplicate services and give them the buying power of a district many times their size.     Officials from all seven local school districts announced Monday that they are forming the consortium to save money on everything from pool chemicals to bus transportation.     Items that require competitive bids, such as cleaning supplies, may be cheaper because more suppliers will compete for the contracts and the districts will qualify for bulk discounts.     Other savings may be found by sharing the cost for duplicate programs, such as grant writers and transporting students to parochial schools.     Each district is researching one item that appears to be a good candidate for savings. Nothing has been implemented yet and superintendents cautioned that they may not start any joint ventures for months.     "We want to get it right the first time," Duanesburg Superintendent Mark Villanti said. "We don’t feel we’re in a race here."     Each joint venture is complicated. District officials must determine exactly what each district needs — such as specific types of pool chemicals — and how much of it is needed in a given time frame. Then officials must discuss whether the item must be delivered to several schools or can be dropped off at one central location.     Once all the details are worked out, the districts that stand to benefit from the item will put out a joint bid request and wait to see whether suppliers feel they can save money by taking one large order instead of several smaller ones.     The technique is not new. Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake has been using it for 18 years to buy paper jointly with several other districts. This year, the districts collectively saved about $30,000, BH-BL Superintendent Jim Schultz said.     Villanti added that bigger districts often get bulk discounts, while small districts like Duanesburg, which has about 930 students, have to pay full price.     "I’d think that no one will benefit more from this than Duanesburg," he said.     Most of the districts in Schenectady County are also classified as small, with 2,000 to 4,500 students. Schenectady is the largest, with 9,300 students. The consortium, with a total of 27,000 students, gives the city school district the buying power of a district three times its size. The other districts will have the clout of districts six to 29 times their size.     That combined buying power will not only result in savings of scale. It will also encourage suppliers to be more responsive to complaints, Scotia-Glenville interim Superintendent J. Briggs McAndrews said.     "It’s going to increase the competition among bidders. There’s increased interest," he said.     District officials plan to begin by buying fuel and other supplies jointly. Then they will put together more complex plans to consolidate the cost of roof repairs, grant writing, health and liability insurance and costly supplies like computers, textbooks and food.