Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EdNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University 

1. You have recently been investigating some school systems that actually publish their checks on-line. This innovation seems to show taxpayers and parents of kids where their money is going? Who started this practice?

Like California publisher Tim Crews has said, "You can't really understand how something as complicated as education works until you can see where the actual dollars go." School districts' check registers being posted online will let parents and taxpayers see both the process and the details. 
 
It's important to look at this big first step towards transparency not as being a "Gotcha" but instead a means of opening up a real dialogue between the community and the administration. Here's a typical example: Many school districts have shortages of one kind or another--perhaps they had to let go of a school nurse at an elementary school. Or maybe there's not enough money for books for the school library. At the same time, the districts' administrators might continue to treat themselves to travel and pricey meals, or to new furniture for their offices, etc. With this sort of push-pull, perhaps when the credit card payments are published the administrators will be persuaded to stop spending money on themselves and instead hire nurses or buy library books--put their focus and the community's dollars on the kids.

Regarding who pioneered posting, the first districts that I know of were Big Spring, Blackwell, Malakoff, Nederland, New Caney and San Angelo, all in Texas. Next came Spring Branch near Houston and a district near my home, Marble Falls. Lovejoy up in the Dallas area has set February 15 as their target date. And our big news is that the Texas Education Agency announced February 1 that their check register was online; so far as I know, this is the first state education agency/department in the U.S. to post its entire check register online; you can see for yourself how $11.26 billion got spent September to January here www.tea.state.tx.us/tea/CheckRegister.html.  More here www.peytonwolcott.com/TEA_CheckRegister.html  (If anyone reading this knows of another state doing this, please contact me at the link on my website: www.peytonwolcott.com)

2) For those districts posting their check registers, what were the impediments and what were the assists?

Let's get the bad news out of the way first, and take a look at the anti-transparency culture which now exists in many school districts in America. Here in Texas it started with legislation passed in 1995 which promoted superintendents' authority over that of trustees--significant chiefly because trustees are elected and superintendents are appointed. Big difference. Parents and taxpayers can hold their trustees accountable by not voting for them when they run for reelection but with superintendents parents and taxpayers have no such opportunity. Since 1995, trustees who have asked questions have often been accused of micromanaging. As an interesting sidebar, one of the chief architects of the 1995 legislation was Bill Ratliff who later became a paid Texas Association of School Boards lobbyist, and TASB is the chief promoter of the so-called "Team of Eight" training which encourages school boards to let their superintendent tend to all of the administrative details of their district. Here's a good example of the pervasiveness of this culture: As recently as a few years ago then-associate Texas education commissioner Ed Flathouse was recommending that district administrators not show their checks to their trustees as it was Ed's belief that all administrative details should be left to the superintendents.

Texas is far from alone. Just today I read about a situation in our neighboring state of Louisiana.  According to KLFY-TV, Lafayette Parish trustee "David Thibodaux says he and other members have been making repeated requests for the status of millions of dollars in federal grants the system needs now. Thibodaux claims he can't get a straight answer out of the woman in charge of acquiring those funds, grants administrator Amy Trahan, or superintendent James Easton. So Thibodaux says he's resorted to a public access website run by the state department of education that is capable of showing where each parish in the state is in its grant application process."

The good news is that despite Education, Inc.'s best efforts to thwart transparency, many smaller districts around the state have continued the traditional practice of presenting a listing of their checks to trustees for approval at each month's regular board meeting as part of their mandated fiduciary duty of care. Because these are generally presented in a PDF format, it has been very easy for early-on districts such as New Caney and Nederland and Big Spring to post the already-created PDF document on the district's website. And to a district they now remark along the lines of, "We've always been very much committed to full transparency and this is a natural next step."

3) What expenditure cost more than you expected?

Oh, my--where to start.

When I first started looking at receipts, probably the first surprise was one for valet parking at a conference for the then-superintendent; I remember wondering, "Why didn't she just park her car herself like we do when we travel?" In another district, there was a receipt for high tea at a luxury hotel on an out-of-town junket. High tea? What about bringing a jar of peanut butter and some crackers from home for when you get hungry? Speaking of food, from the checks it would appear school employees eat and eat and eat--there are checks for catering and for restaurant tabs and for parties and receptions of all kinds. What ever happened to bring-something-from-home potlucks? And many of these events appear to require flowers and gifts, again all at taxpayer expense. But I've saved the worst for last--the edu-programs. It's bad enough that fuzzy math is a failure, but to have to pay so much for it rubs salt on the wounds; hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks for fuzzy math trainings, fuzzy math retreats, fuzzy math materials. We've produced otherwise intelligent 20- and 30-year olds who can't tell you what six times nine is.

4) Did posting check registers online create bookkeeping problems for the districts? Did the numbers of public records requests suddenly escalate once people could see the individual checks online?

The superintendents I've talked to said they experienced no problems at all after going public with their districts' check registers online. I've thought about this a lot, and my hunch is that those first districts posting their check registers online really are--and bravo to them--committed to creating a climate of transparency. They don't feel they have anything to hide. Which of course makes you wonder about those districts not willing to post their check registers online, what's going on with them. At this point, a superintendent whose school district is not working on voluntarily posting his or her check register online has to worry that he or she will be perceived by their community as being anti-open government and anti-transparency, and who wants or needs that kind of negative PR.

5) Why would most tax payers have difficulty getting hold of the school budget?

Again, you have to look at the culture which has grown up among some administrators which resists transparency. You can't blame a superintendent with a big AmEx bill for not wanting folks to see it. Sometimes administrators appear to have forgotten that it's the taxpayers' money they're spending, not their own.

6) Where is money going that taxpayers don't know about?

Fees to the middle layers of education such as county boards of education and regional education service centers. Association fees--state school boards, principals, business officers, you name it.  An endless stream of edu-conferences. Lawyers.  And consultants. Superintendents appear to be hiring consultants for anything and everything in order to spread the responsibility for their decisions; if there's a problem, the consultant can be fired rather than the superintendent. Here in Texas, the passage of our miserably written Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills standards gave rise to an entire sub-culture of TEKS consultants, although we've had some good news lately. State Board of Education member Don McLeroy wrote recently, "The board right now is assessing the English standards last adopted in 1997. So doing, we realize that much has been learned about how to improve these standards. Thus, the board initiated a process of major revisions."

7) What about utilities in a school- heating, gas, water, electric--are all these clearly marked and on-line?

From the ones I've seen, yes, although an area worth further investigation is the practice by some districts of paying energy consultants who appear to be offering commonsensical advice, things like "turn off the lights at night." Is it necessary to pay a consultant to tell you to turn off the lights at night?

8) Superintendents and principals and vice-principals salaries---where are the surprises, (if any) and what are they?

We're not asking that salaries be included because unlike other disbursements, payroll checks are repetitive from month to month and would take up a lot of space. Come August when school boards approve their district's salary and stipend schedules they can easily post those documents online at that time. Some districts are already posting their supes' contracts, interesting reading if only for the perqs: car allowances, cell phones, etc. When Arlene Ackerman was supe at San Francisco USD she even got a housing allowance. Another lucrative salary area which might surprise many people is that of unused sick and vacation pay which can be collected when leaving the district. Think about it: Why would an administrator need to use up any vacation time when they can play golf and party at education conferences--at taxpayer expense? Also, oftentimes real time worked by higher-ups is self-reported so if a superintendent says he or she's not taken a sick day in two or three years, how could anyone really know? Rhonda Thurman in Chattanooga's been looking into this--her district has something like $13 million coming due for unused sick and vacation pay for district employees for which they've only budgeted $1 mil. Addressing the culture of non-transparency issue yet again, Rhonda had a difficult time getting the names of the potential payees from superintendent Jim Scales--even though she's a trustee.

9) What question have I neglected to ask?

"What's next?" We're looking for two firsts -- the first school district outside of Texas to post their check register online, and for the first state department of education outside of Texas to post. Can I make a small plug here? Anybody can ask, in any school district in America. You're entitled; it's your money and it's your kids.  Everybody will benefit.

Published February 19, 2007