The Oak Harbor School District is taking a step toward a paperless office.

Starting with November’s school board meeting, board information will be available on the Internet for the public to download.

School board documents will be available to download before all school board meetings. Those documents include agendas and supporting documents.

The Oak Harbor School District is contracting with a firm, Board Docs, to offer the online service. The contract is subscription based and will cost the school district $800 a month.

Superintendent Rick Schulte said the new system will allow easier public access to school board documents.

It will also eventually save time and money devoted to printing and secretary costs.

The school board conducted a trial run of the new system during its meeting this month. During that meeting, each school board member and administrator had a laptop computer at the table.

Schulte said those laptops are part of a classroom set of laptops the school district uses for training purposes and don’t belong to the school board members.

He said the training is necessary considering more and more school operations are becoming computer based.

He added the board members wouldn’t have gone with the new system if it required computer equipment for them.

“They didn’t want to buy laptops for individual school board members,” Schulte said.

He added that several board members may choose to bring their own personal laptop computer for use during the board meetings.

To access the document service, go to the Oak Harbor School District’s Web site at www.ohsd.net and click on School Board, which will provide access to Board Docs.

You can reach Nathan Whalen at nwhalen@whidbeynews

times.com or call 675-6611.