SchoolDude

Cary, N.C. (March 1, 2004) — The Association of Educational Purchasing Agencies (AEPA) recently selected SchoolDude.com of Cary, NC to provide affordable web-native facility management solutions to school districts across the United States. The AEPA is an association of state educational service agencies that serves school districts in 20 states, as well as more than 40-percent of the nation’s K-12 school districts, by providing cooperative purchasing and other services.

At the AEPA’s December 2003 board meeting, the organization’s board recommended that its member educational service agencies make SchoolDude’s web-native solutions available to their school districts through state contracts. Service agencies from 18 of the 20 states have already entered into a direct agreement with SchoolDude or are currently in the process of developing an agreement. These agreements will enable school districts to purchase SchoolDude’s web-native applications at discounted rates through their AEPA member educational service agency.

SchoolDude’s product suite is designed specifically for educational institutions and includes solutions for work order processing, technology workflow management, preventive maintenance scheduling, facility usage scheduling, utility tracking and inventory management. Because the application services are delivered over the Internet, the technology is affordable for both small and large districts. More than 650 educational institutions across the nation are already utilizing SchoolDude’s web-native solutions.

“More than 20 states join together annually to perform cooperative procurement through the AEPA. When the association issued a bid for web-native facility management applications in September 2003, SchoolDude.com received the highest point score by the evaluation committee and was approved as the preferred and exclusive provider in this product category,” stated Max Luft, Executive Director of the AEPA. “Each of the AEPA state member agencies is now formalizing contracts so that the program can be implemented in 20 states with the potential of serving 20 million students. Over the years, I have seen a great change in software technology, with the industry evolving from desktop systems to Internet-based applications. SchoolDude has definitely taken the lead in developing and delivering web-native software to improve and maintain school facilities.”

Offering affordable facility management technology to educational institutions is crucial to the future of the American educational system, which has recently seen maintenance and operations budgets decline to a 30-year low according to American School and University magazine . And despite the growing evidence that clean, safe, comfortable school facilities positively affect student performance , estimates from School Business Affairs magazine indicate there is $266billion in unmet funding for deferred maintenance and adequacy needs of school facilities (more than $5,000 per student enrolled).

“SchoolDude’s web-native applications have provided our clients with proven and measurable productivity gains and cost savings,” said Lee Prevost, President and Founder of SchoolDude.com. “If our technology were implemented in all public school districts in each of the states covered by this agreement, we conservatively estimate this would provide nearly $1billion in productivity savings, energy savings, and facility capital budget relief to America’s schools. The productivity gains alone are the equivalent of having nearly 10,000 additional people to maintain our educational facilities. Because SchoolDude’s applications provide savings directly to the bottom line, a district can realize a return on their investment only one to two months after paying the annual fee for our systems.”