📌 Managed Print Services for Schools: Key Takeaways
When school budgets are tight, better print management can help every dollar go further. Managed Print Services can help schools:
- Gain visibility into actual printing costs across devices, buildings, and departments
- Right-size printer fleets by identifying underused, redundant, or inefficient equipment
- Reduce toner, paper, and unnecessary printing waste
- Create more predictable service and supply costs
- Use print policies and secure release to control unnecessary printing
- Reduce the time IT teams spend troubleshooting and managing printers
- Make smarter equipment decisions using real print usage data
The goal isn’t simply to print less—it’s to create a more efficient, cost-effective print environment that allows schools to put more of their limited resources toward teaching and learning.
In today’s economy, K-12 school budgets are being stretched in every direction. Technology investments, classroom resources, staffing, cybersecurity, facilities, and other essential expenses are all competing for limited funding. That means school leaders and IT teams are under increasing pressure to find savings wherever they can—without taking resources away from teaching and learning.
One area that can easily fly under the radar? Printing.
Schools still rely heavily on printed materials for worksheets, assessments, lesson materials, administrative documents, parent communications, student records, and more. But when printers, supplies, service, and print volumes are managed separately, it can be difficult to determine exactly how much printing is costing your school. That’s where Managed Print Services for Schools can help.
A managed print services (MPS) strategy gives schools greater visibility and control over their entire print environment. Instead of simply trying to print less, schools can identify unnecessary expenses, optimize equipment, reduce waste, simplify service and supplies, and build a more predictable print budget. For schools looking for ways to make limited resources go further, those savings can add up.
What Are Managed Print Services for Schools?
Managed Print Services for Schools is a comprehensive approach to managing a school’s entire print infrastructure through a single print strategy and provider including all of the school’s printers, multifunction printers (MFPs), office copiers, printer supplies and service, and print usage.
Rather than taking reactive actions such as purchasing toner when it runs out, calling for service when something breaks, and replacing printers individually as they age, managed print services takes a more proactive approach.
An MPS provider can evaluate your existing print environment, analyze print volumes and costs, monitor devices, automate toner replenishment, provide maintenance and repairs, and help determine whether your school has the right number and types of printers in the right locations. Print management software for education can add another layer of control by helping schools monitor usage and implement policies such as duplex printing, color restrictions, print quotas, and secure print release.
The goal isn’t to eliminate printing entirely. It’s to make sure your school is only paying for the printing it actually needs.
Why Can School Printing Become So Expensive?
School printing can become so expensive because the cost of printing goes far beyond the initial purchase price (or lease cost) of a printer or copier.
Consider for a moment everything involved in keeping a school print environment running:
- Printers, MFPs, copiers, specialty printers
- Toner and other consumables
- Replacement parts
- Maintenance and repairs
- Paper
- Electricity
- IT support
- Print servers and infrastructure
- Staff time spent ordering supplies
- Unnecessary or abandoned print jobs
- Underused devices
- Expensive desktop printers
When these expenses are spread across departments, buildings, purchasing cards, supply closets, service invoices, and IT budgets, schools may never see the true total cost of printing. That lack of visibility can make it difficult to identify where money is being wasted. Managed Print Services brings those costs together so schools can make decisions based on actual data rather than assumptions.
10 Ways Managed Print Services for Schools Can Help Stretch Tight Budgets
The cost of school printing isn’t tied to just one expense. It is spread across printers, toner, paper, repairs, IT support, unnecessary print jobs, aging equipment, and even devices that are rarely used. That’s why reducing printing costs isn’t always as simple as telling teachers and staff to print less.
There are many ways in which partnering with an experienced and reputable managed print services provider can help schools to make their printing budgets go further by taking a more strategic approach and looking at the entire print environment to uncover inefficiencies, reduce unnecessary expenses, and make ongoing costs easier to manage.
- Find Out What Your School Is Actually Spending on Printing
Foremost, you can’t reduce a cost you can’t see. One of the first steps in a Managed Print Services engagement should be a print assessment. A print assessment evaluates your school’s existing print devices, print volumes, usage patterns, supply costs, service requirements, and device placement. It can help answer questions like:
- How many printers do we actually have?
- How much are we printing each month?
- Which devices cost the most to operate?
- Are some printers barely being used?
- Are other devices handling more volume than they were designed for?
- How much color printing are we doing?
- How much are we spending on toner and repairs?
Print tracking can provide even greater visibility. Modern print management solutions allow schools to see where printing is occurring and identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary costs. Instead of simply telling everyone to “print less,” administrators can make targeted decisions based on real usage.
- Right-Size Your School’s Printer Fleet
More printers don’t necessarily mean greater productivity. In many schools, printers have accumulated over the years, especially smaller desktop printers. A department purchases one. A teacher gets another. An older printer gets moved to a classroom instead of retired. Eventually, the school may be supporting a patchwork of devices from different manufacturers and generations.
Each additional printer means another device to purchase toner for, maintain, keep secure and updated, troubleshoot issues, potentially repair, and eventually replace. Some may also have a significantly higher cost per page than larger, more efficient shared devices. Managed Print Services for Schools can help identify underused, redundant, or expensive devices and determine where consolidation makes sense. That doesn’t mean removing every convenient classroom printer.
The goal is to put the right device in the right location based on actual usage. A busy administrative office may need a high-volume multifunction printer, while another area may only need access to a nearby shared device. Right-sizing the fleet can reduce the number of devices the school has to support while still giving teachers and staff convenient and cost-effective access to printing.
- Reduce Toner Waste and Eliminate the Supply-Closet Guessing Game
Open the supply closet in some schools and you may find hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars in toner. There might be cartridges for printers the school no longer owns, multiple backup cartridges for devices that rarely print, and supplies purchased from several different vendors.
The phenomenon is that at the same time, the printer that everyone actually uses and needs toner replacements, somehow there’s none to be found. This is another area where Managed Print Services for schools can help.
With automated supplies replenishment, your managed devices are monitored remotely and when toner reaches a predetermined level, replacement toner is be shipped proactively. This means:
- Less emergency ordering.
- Less excess inventory.
- Fewer unused cartridges sitting on shelves.
- Less staff time spent managing supplies.
And depending on the Managed Print Services agreement, toner and other consumables are typically included in the school’s cost-per-page rate so there is no additional cost. Instead of guessing what toner you’ll need next semester, supplies become part of a more predictable system.
- Control Unnecessary Printing Without Restricting Teachers
Reducing school printing costs shouldn’t mean making it harder for teachers to do their jobs. Teachers may legitimately need to print worksheets, assessments, lesson materials, differentiated resources, classroom activities, and other instructional content.
Instead of placing a blanketed restriction on printing, the question that needs to be asked is: Where is unnecessary printing happening?
Print management software gives schools the necessary tools to reduce waste without eliminating valuable classroom printing. Depending on the print management solution, schools may be able to:
- Default print jobs to black-and-white
- Set duplex printing as the default
- Restrict color printing by user or department
- Establish student print quotas
- Track print volumes by user, department, or building
- Route larger jobs to more cost-efficient devices
- Require authentication before documents are released
These relatively small changes can help schools reduce unnecessary paper and toner consumption while preserving the printing teachers and staff need.
- Stop Paying for Documents Nobody Picks Up
#5 goes hand in hand with reducing controlling unnecessary printing. We’ve all seen this scenario:
Someone sends a document to the printer. Nothing appears.
They hit print again. And maybe one more time for good measure.
Five minutes later, three copies of the same 40-page document are sitting in the output tray.
Or someone prints something, gets distracted, and never picks it up at all.
Those abandoned and duplicate print jobs waste both paper and toner. This is where secure print release can help. Instead of immediately printing a document, the print job remains in a secure queue until the user authenticates at the printer.
If the user realizes they no longer need the document, it never has to be printed. And as an added benefit, secure print release can help prevent sensitive documents from sitting unattended in output trays. For schools managing student information, personnel documents, financial information, and other sensitive records, that’s an important consideration beyond the potential savings.
- Make Printer Service Costs More Predictable
Printer repair costs have a habit of showing up at the worst possible time. One month, everything works perfectly. The next, multiple printers need service back-to-back and an expensive part has to be replaced.
For schools operating on carefully planned budgets, unexpected expenses make forecasting difficult. A Managed Print Services agreement can make these costs more predictable. Depending on the contract, your cost-per-page or monthly charge may include items such as:
- Toner
- Parts
- Labor
- Preventive maintenance
- On-site service
- Remote device monitoring
Instead of budgeting separately for supplies, service calls, and replacement parts, schools can consolidate many of those expenses into a more predictable printing cost. That makes it easier for administrators to understand what printing is costing and plan accordingly.
- Give Your IT Team Time Back
There’s another important component to school budgets that isn’t measured in dollars: Your IT team’s time.
Every minute an IT employee spends troubleshooting a printer, finding the correct driver, tracking down toner, clearing a recurring error, or coordinating a service call is time they aren’t spending on other technology priorities. And those priorities aren’t getting any smaller – school IT teams are managing cybersecurity, student devices, networks, classroom technology, software platforms, user accounts, infrastructure, and countless other responsibilities.
Printer management shouldn’t consume more of their time than necessary. With managed print services for schools, many routine print responsibilities can shift to the MPS provider. That means fewer printer-related support issues for your internal IT team and more time to focus on projects that have a greater impact on students, teachers, and the school.
- Standardize Equipment to Reduce Complexity
A school with 50 printers could theoretically have 20 different models, and even sometimes 3-4 different manufacturers. That means for each of those models, there are different toner cartridges, replacement parts, print drives, features, service requirements, and even security capabilities. Supporting that type of print environment becomes complicated, and complexity often costs money.
Standardizing a school printer fleet doesn’t necessarily mean every printer needs to be identical. It means creating a deliberate device strategy instead of accumulating equipment one purchase at a time. Schools may be able to standardize around a smaller group of devices selected for different usage requirements.
For example, you might have one model for lower-volume classroom or workgroup printing, another for higher-volume office printing, and larger multifunction devices strategically placed throughout each building for color printing or specialty finishing requirements like stapling or booklet making. Fewer device types can simplify supplies, service, support, training, and fleet management.
- Replace Aging Printers Strategically, Not Reactively
The cheapest printer is not always the cheapest printer to own. An aging desktop printer may technically still work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean keeping it is the most cost-effective option. Older equipment can become expensive quickly due to:
- Higher cost-per-page
- Frequent repairs
- Expensive or difficult-to-source supplies
- Slower print speeds
- Limited security features
- Poor energy efficiency
- Increased downtime
On the other hand, replacing every printer simply because it’s old isn’t necessarily a smart use of the budget either. Print usage data helps schools determine which devices should stay, which should move, and which should be replaced. Instead of replacing printers according to age alone, schools can prioritize investments based on total cost, reliability, volume, and actual need.
- Turn Printing into a Predictable Operating Expense
Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of managed print services for schools is predictability. Without a print strategy, costs can fluctuate dramatically.
One month you purchase toner. The next month a printer needs an expensive repair. Then another department orders a replacement printer. Then several devices reach the end of their useful life at the same time.
With an MPS strategy, schools can gain a clearer picture of their expected printing costs and make more informed budgeting decisions. That doesn’t mean every managed print services contract works the same way.
Schools should carefully review proposed managed print service contracts in depth and look at for any potential cost traps pertaining to:
- Base charges
- Cost-per-page rates
- Included print volumes
- Color versus black-and-white rates
- Annual escalators
- Contract length
- Equipment terms
- Service response expectations
- What supplies and parts are included
- What happens if print volumes change
The right contract should fit your school’s actual printing needs, not force your school into a one-size-fits-all program.
How Much Money Can Managed Print Services Save a School?
So, how much money can MPS save a K-12 school? There isn’t one universal savings percentage for managed print services for schools because every school’s print environment is different. Potential savings depend on factors such as:
- Number of print devices (printers, MFPs, copiers, etc.)
- Current print volume
- Percentage of color printing
- Existing supplies costs
- Device age and efficiency
- Service and repair expenses
- Number of underutilized devices
- Current print policies
- Amount of unnecessary printing
A school with hundreds of unmanaged desktop printers may have significantly more opportunities to reduce costs than a school that already operates a highly optimized fleet. That’s why the best place to start isn’t with a promised savings percentage, it’s with a print assessment.
Once you understand what your school owns, how much it prints, and what it’s currently spending, you can identify realistic opportunities for improvement.
Does Managed Print Services Mean Schools Have to Print Less?
Does adopting a managed print services strategy mean printing has to dramatically decrease? No, not necessarily. The purpose of MPS isn’t to stop schools from printing; it’s to eliminate unnecessary printing expenses while making necessary printing more efficient.
Printed materials still serve an important purpose in education. The goal is to ensure teachers have access to the resources they need without paying for waste, inefficient equipment, unnecessary color pages, abandoned print jobs, excess toner, or printers the school doesn’t need.
Sometimes the answer is printing less. Sometimes it’s printing on a more cost-efficient device. And sometimes it’s simply managing the printing you’re already doing more effectively.
Is Managed Print Services Worth It for Schools?
For schools struggling with unpredictable printing expenses, aging equipment, supply management, frequent service calls, or a lack of visibility into print usage, managed print services for school can provide a more strategic way to control costs.
But the value of MPS depends heavily on how the program is designed. A good MPS partner shouldn’t begin by telling your school how many printers to buy. They should begin by understanding your environment and that includes evaluating and understanding your current equipment, print volumes, user needs, building layouts, existing contracts or leases, technology infrastructure, security requirements, and budget goals.
From there, your school can build a print strategy around what teachers, administrators, students, and IT actually need.
Frequently Asked Questions About Managed Print Services for Schools
What are Managed Print Services for Schools?
Managed print services for schools is a strategy for managing a school’s printers, multifunction printers, supplies, service, and print usage through a coordinated program. An MPS provider can help schools monitor equipment, automate toner replenishment, manage repairs and maintenance, analyze print volumes, optimize printer placement, and identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary printing costs.
How can Managed Print Services help schools save money?
Managed print services can help schools save money by identifying inefficient or underused printers, reducing unnecessary color and single-sided printing, controlling toner inventory, consolidating devices where appropriate, reducing print waste, and making service and supply expenses more predictable. Actual savings vary depending on the school’s existing print environment.
Can Managed Print Services help schools reduce printing costs without limiting teachers?
Yes. The goal of managed print services isn’t simply to make teachers print less. Print management tools can help schools reduce unnecessary printing while maintaining access to the instructional materials teachers need. Schools can implement strategies such as duplex defaults, appropriate color-printing rules, secure print release, and routing larger jobs to more cost-efficient devices.
What is included in Managed Print Services for schools?
Managed print services agreements vary by provider, but they may include toner and supplies, parts, labor, maintenance, device monitoring, automated toner replenishment, usage reporting, and print management tools. Schools should carefully review what is and isn’t included before entering into an MPS agreement.
How do schools know if they have too many printers?
A print assessment can help determine whether a school has the right number of printers. By evaluating device locations, print volumes, usage patterns, operating costs, and service history, schools can identify printers that are underused, overworked, redundant, or more expensive to operate than necessary.
Is Managed Print Services worth it for a school district?
Managed print services may be worth considering when a school or district struggles with unpredictable print expenses, aging printers, frequent service issues, excessive toner inventory, limited visibility into print usage, or a large number of devices for IT to manage. A print assessment can help determine whether an MPS strategy could provide meaningful operational or financial benefits.
Make Your School’s Print Budget Work Harder
When budgets are tight, every dollar matters. Schools shouldn’t have to choose between providing teachers with the resources they need and controlling printing expenses.
The better approach is to make sure the dollars already being spent on printing are being used wisely.
Managed print services for schools can help uncover hidden costs, reduce waste, optimize printer fleets, simplify toner and service, free up IT resources, and create greater predictability around printing expenses. And when schools spend less money maintaining an inefficient print environment, those resources can potentially be redirected toward the technology, programs, people, and classroom resources that support students.
Wondering how much your school is really spending on printing? Parmetech can help you evaluate your school’s current print environment to identify unnecessary costs, inefficient equipment, and opportunities to simplify your printing strategy.
Our team can assess your print devices, analyze usage, evaluate service and supply costs, and help determine whether managed print services makes sense for your school or district.
Ready to see where your print budget is going? Contact Parmetech to schedule a print assessment! You can call us at (800) 727-6383, email us at info@parmetech.com, or submit a request through our website form.
