That organization, Education Technology Joint Powers Authority (Ed Tech JPA), stepped into the public light during the California IT in Education (CITE) conference in Sacramento last month to remind school officials from around the state, and even outside of it, that they can join Ed Tech JPA free of charge with no strings attached and help grow it nationwide.
“There’s nothing in our organization that bars anyone (public school districts and charter schools) from joining,” JPA President Brianne Ford said Wednesday. “We’ve had some inquiries from other states.”
She said the JPA formed “out of frustration” in 2019 after the K-12 school district Ford worked for, Irvine Unified, compared their request for proposals for purchasing goods and services to those of neighboring districts. The process seemed “unnecessarily long, and the contracts were uneven” across the region.
“Everything was taking an awful lot of time," she said. "We asked an attorney if there was a better way and found out there was.”
The JPA formed with a website and a cause: to streamline procurement for digital products and services and leverage the buying power of multiple schools to negotiate prices, buy in bulk and save money. Today it has 163 member districts that serve a total of 2.3 million students, said Michelle Bennett, a JPA board member and employee of Irvine Unified School District.
In addition to Irvine, other founding members include school employees from San Juan, San Ramon Valley, Fullerton, Clovis, El Dorado County and Capistrano Unified districts, according to the website.
Irvine is among the larger districts with 37,000 students, but many member districts have less than 1,000 students, Ford said.
JPA has no employees, and much of the work Ford, Bennett and other board members put in does not benefit their own districts. Ford provided one example of a project earlier this year that benefited her district and most others: the purchase and implementation of a learning management system. Working as part of a group in the procurement process, Irvine saved the district $40,000 and six months of administrative work.
According to the JPA website, the organization has been awarded 23 procurements to date, ranging from learning management systems to social and emotional learning assessments, to web design and hosting, to student online safety systems, to college and career planning platforms, in addition to other purchases related to human resource functions and other administrative services.
As for current projects, JPA is securing RFPs for school security and IT administration upgrades. Current and future members have until early January to join that initiative, Ford said.
She added that school districts from as far as New York state have inquired about joining. She predicts 2024 will be the year JPA extends beyond the Golden State and becomes a national organization.
According to its website, JPA could also serve public agencies, including city governments, state government agencies and public colleges. In fact, members are not even required to use Ed Tech JPA contracts.
“Ed Tech JPA members are free to contract with another vendor if awarded vendors do not meet their needs. Ed Tech JPA desires to ease the procurement process for its members without limiting options,” the website says. “Our vendors have partnered with us to streamline the procurement piece of contracting and have entered into minimum price guarantees, so we hope members will find contracts that meet their needs through Ed Tech JPA. Ed Tech JPA members are also free to issue their own procurements and pursue other procurement processes.”
