SHARED OPERATIONAL
SERVICES

An Innovative New Program Designed Exclusively for Colorado Facility Schools and Direct-Care Non-Profits

Colorado is home to 33 approved facility schools, which are educational/academic components of DHS-licensed day treatment and residential children’s treatment centers, as well as at some hospitals.

These schools are fully approved by the Colorado Dept. of Education (CDE) and receive educational funding and placements from a variety of sources, including public school districts, Dept. of Human Services (DHS), courts, hospitals, behavioral health organizations and the Division of Youth Services (DYS).

Approximately 6,000 students are placed in facility schools each year, representing roughly 80 of Colorado’s 179 public school districts. Some facility schools serve fewer than 10 students, while others have student populations in excess of 100. 

Because facility schools have long been underfunded, it can be challenging for many schools to acquire the supplies and services they need to simply maintain daily operations. We are proud to introduce a new program that has the potential to change that. 

CAFCA’s new Shared Operational Services (SOS) Program

As part of SB23-219 legislation, the Office of Facility Schools, a division of the CDE, was required to issue the Shared Operational Services (SOS) Grant, which will be responsible for determining need, coordinating and organizing, and finding ways that services and/or costs can be shared among and between facility schools. CAFCA was selected as the recipient of the grant, which will be distributed over a two-year period. We are honored to be leading this new program, which has the potential to deliver significant savings on a multitude of goods and services so that economies of scale can be optimized across our schools.

Why Should Your Facility School Participate?

The SOS program offers Colorado’s Facility Schools a new way to purchase the goods and services needed for their daily operation, as well as an opportunity to acquire some goods and services that were previously unavailable. Subscribing to this new model is FREE—and Facility Schools save money!

This exciting, new program achieves a number of goals for Facility Schools:

• Helps them better manage rising prices and inflation;
• Helps build stronger, higher-quality relationships with suppliers;
• The savings allow schools the chance to re-invest in the school–improved cash-flow can be invested in staffing, new programs and even capital improvements.

When building this program from the ground up, we knew our best chances for success were in partnering with an established purchasing cooperative that understands the science of buying. And that’s how we found the National Back Office Cooperative (NBOC), which is a national non-profit organization formed in 2008 to better utilize existing resources by developing and implementing best practices, including  consolidation of back-office operations. In turn, this new model offers:

• Increased purchasing power
• Lower annual consumable cost
• Improved quality
• Stronger contractual agreements
• Improved vendor acquisition

And there is NO COST to participate in this innovative program! The bottom line is that the new SOS program saves facility schools time and money. These are the same goods and services you’re going to buy anyway, regardless of whether or not you participate in the SOS program. So, if you’re going to purchase them anyway, why not purchase them through a program that benefits your school and saves money???

But wait…there’s more!

Along with all the wonderful benefits of participation in the program listed above, SOS offers reduced costs on the purchase of services in these categories:

• HRIS/Payroll
• Food Consumables
• Business Systems
• Finance & Accounting
• Managed IT Services

And SOS is working to expand offerings that will include:

• Medical Billing Systems
• Language Translation Services (professionally trained, medically qualified, approved for IEP meetings and beyond)

Watch our promotional video to learn more about this exciting program!

Get Your School Involved

While this exciting, new program is not mandatory, we encourage all facility schools to  explore what the SOS program has to offer and see if it’s right or them. Since there is no cost to participate in the program, there’s absolutely nothin to lose…and substantial savings to gain. To find out more, you can reach out via email here with your questions. To sign up for the SOS program, click here.