Schools

Pens, papers and all that

Jeanne Leftwich oversees school supplies and equipment, large and small.

By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE, Times Correspondent
Published October 18, 2007

David Lewis tags a shipment inside the Hernando County School District's warehouse. It dispenses supplies, including cafeteria, clinic and custodial items.
	[Maurice Rivenbark | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT Jeanne Leftwich oversees school supplies and equipment.

BROOKSVILLE - Jeanne Leftwich keeps track of stuff. Lots of stuff.

Leftwich is the Hernando County School District's property control and warehouse manager. Her job: managing and coordinating warehouse supplies and properties.

"Our department keeps records for fixed assets," she said.

Examples include computers, furniture and buses. When a new piece of equipment or furniture or anything of value is added to the district, she said, "We see a purchase order, give it an inventory number, and annually we go and find all the equipment."

The warehouse staffers work as auditors, Leftwich explained, making sure all equipment is where it is supposed to be. Thousands of things get transferred and must be accounted for.

When equipment must be updated and there is a surplus, the warehouse has a sale. It holds two or three auctions a year to get rid of obsolete or unusable equipment. Old textbooks are sold to vendors.

Leftwich's department, on Mobley Road in Brooksville, is involved in schools' physical changes.

"We hold values of schools' improvements, including construction," Leftwich said. "We are the record holders." When a building is demolished or school personnel move, she said, "Our job is to go in and do a walk-through. We take care of what is left behind."

Internal mail within the school district is another warehouse responsibility. There is one truck and one driver, Angie Ralph, to handle deliveries.

Warehouse offices have one custodian: Croberto Perez. Four property accounting specialists assist Leftwich. They are Leeanna Hale, Bill McHale, Rachel Thomas and Chris Green. There is a warehouse crew chief, Dave Lewis, and three warehouse workers: Lee Grant, David Stanchis and Merle Auvil.

The warehouse dispenses consumable supplies, including cafeteria, clinic and custodial items. Schools use a lot of paper for making copies. "We buy it by the truckload. About 1,600 cases at a time," Leftwich said. The schools order what they need, Leftwich said, and "we pull it and ship it."

The warehouse staff is responsible for delivering and picking up testing materials. It handles recycling of cans from cafeterias, cardboard and paper. It picks up broken equipment, takes it to maintenance for repair and returns it when it is fixed.

The staff also helps with special events, delivering tables and chairs to various sites.

The warehouse has a huge freezer and a giant cooler. Those are used to hold emergency supplies or to hold perishables when a school's refrigeration fails.

Printing also is part of the warehouse department. Tom Powers does graphics, and Richard Fremer is press operator. The printers are busy. They produce district forms of all kinds, including letterheads, sick forms, personnel forms, newsletters, passes, certificates, tickets and emergency forms.

Fremer and Powers produce the Student Code of Conduct books, the science fair books and the teacher evaluation manuals. They also do some special orders.

"Each school has a few things of its own that we do for them," Powers said.

Despite the amount of paper the district uses, it tries to minimize waste. "We recycle all paper," Leftwich said.

Piles and piles of printed forms await delivery to the schools. Boxes and boxes of empty paper are on standby.

"With an in-house printing department," Leftwich said, "we save a whole lot of money."

[Last modified October 17, 2007, 20:13:30]