School transparency is going mainstream

TMCnet.com has picked up on the growing movement towards school transparency. Our friends at the Mackinac Center are asking all 551 Michigan schools to post their budgets and check registers online through their “Show Michigan the Money” program. Kenneth Braun, director of the project, explained the goal of this initiative:

“I’m not presuming there is great malfeasance in these districts. It’s more of a good community relations thing. We think everyone should do it, not just school districts, but other levels of government. It establishes trust within a community in a situation and time when the trust is kind of shaky.” Indeed, one Michigan district signed on after a payroll clerk embezzled more than $1 million before being brought to justice. In another Michigan school system that now complies with the checkbook project, the FBI and Justice Department prosecuted two employees for stealing, he said.

According to Sunshine Review, school districts should have the following information on their websites:
- Budget
- School district government meetings/agendas
- Elected officials of the school district
- School district administrators
- Lobbying/advocacy
- Access to government records and public documents
- Contracts with teachers and support staff
- Contracts with vendors
- Tax burden
- Criminal background checks
- Academic performance

The Sam Adams Alliance’s own Paul Miller also had a good point in the article:

“With transparency, you are going to have more school districts accountable to children and the parents instead of unions and special interests,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s a huge no-brainer. Parents have a right to know how their money is being spent on their children’s education.”

Let us know if you are interested in helping out with the My Government Website project on Sunshine Review. Volunteers are building new articles every day to help make our government more transparent, more accountable, and ultimately more effective.

Sunshine Review completes transparency evaluations for all 3,140 counties in the United States

For Immediate Release

Sunshine Review completes transparency evaluations for all 3,140 counties in the United States

Arizona counties edges out California for top transparency ranking, Arkansas holds up the rear with the worst

Chicago, April 2 – The government transparency website Sunshine Review (www.sunshinreview.org), a project of the Sam Adams Alliance, is proud to report that our community of contributors has completed transparency evaluations for all 3,140 counties in the United States. Each county was measured against a 10-point transparency checklist to determine how open and honest they are with the public they serve.

“Every county in the nation has a responsibility to make basic information easily available online to the taxpayer,” said Managing Editor, Kristin McMurray. “Sunshine Review has made it simple for counties to understand their responsibilities as we have created the standard for them to abide by.”

The checklist criteria measures if basic information such as budgets, taxes, contracts, and lobbying efforts, as well as information about public officials and administrators, can be easily accessed from the county website.

As a result of the county evaluations, Sunshine Review created a comparison chart detailing the transparency success, and failures of each state, while at the same time giving them an overall ranking. Arizona edged out California for the most transparent counties, while Arkansas is sitting in the cellar with the lowest transparency ranking.

“The Sam Adams Alliance believes that open and honest government is the cornerstone to a successful democracy,” said Sam Adams Alliance President, John Tsarpalas. “A quick look at the comparison of county websites by state chart and it’s obvious that all states have a long way to go before they can claim they are open and honest with the public. Even the states that have the top rankings need to not rest on their laurels and continue to strive for true transparency.

The Sunshine Review community will continue to monitor the transparency efforts of county governments nationwide. We are hopeful that politicians seriously consider these evaluations and if they haven’t already, create transparency projects based on the10-point transparency checklist; so they can one day proudly say they are completely open and honest with the public they serve.

“With the county reviews completed, the Sunshine Review community has begun evaluating the nearly 13,000 school districts in the country,” said McMurray. “We have created a school district transparency checklist that is similar to the county checklist. Sunshine Review believes parents should also easily be able to find information about academic performance and teacher background checks on their school districts website.

Contacts:

Kristin McMurray, Managing Editor

Sunshine Review

312-920-0080 ext 311

Paul Miller, Communications Director

Sam Adams Alliance

312-920-0080 ext 302

312-845-3501 cell

Sunshine Review, a project of the Sam Adams Alliance, was launched in July 2008. In the nine months the site has been active, over 1.5 million pages have been viewed and nearly 18,000 pages have been created. Sunshine Review is an open-wiki source with nearly 400 contributors in addition to full-time and part-time staff members.

Milestone reached on SunshineReview.org

Sunshine Review reached an important milestone recently, and we’re in the mood to celebrate!

The Sunshine Review community has evaluated the level of transparency of official government websites for all 3,140 counties in the United States. Sunshine Review’s ten-point transparency checklist is now being utilized by government agencies all over the country as a guideline as they create and implement transparency projects. Watchdog groups, journalists, and public policy organizations are turning to Sunshine Review as their go-to source when measuring government transparency.

We owe a big thank you to our online community of sunshine volunteer contributors, citizens who use Sunshine Review to check up on their government, journalists and bloggers who write about our work, and our financial supporters.

Now, onward to the next challenge!