Central Falls should make the teacher agreement public

Central Falls, a school district in Rhode Island, gained notoriety after firing all of its teachers due to continued bad academic performance of its students. Obama hailed the action as an example of accountability in the education system.

Now, we learn that the school district and teachers’ union has come to an agreement that will hire 87 percent of the teachers back (sans the application process). This was after over 700 other teachers had applied to take on the positions.

The new agreement between the teachers and school board will promote “accountability” and enforce “commonsense” solutions.

Too bad this agreement, and the new changes, have not been made public. If Central Falls wants to ensure accountability of teachers performance than the district needs to disclose how the school is being run. According to Sunshine Review’s checklist, the student’s aren’t the only one’s earning failing grades. This agreement, along with other commonsense data needs to be proactively disclosed on the district’s website.

Updates from the states

A couple of few interesting updates…

* Our friends at Americans for Tax Reform posted a strong admonishment to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and state Senate President Bob Burns on the ATR blog this morning. Burns recently discharged Senator Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert) and Senate Majority Whip Pamela Gorman (R-Anthem) from their leadership positions after the senators voted against the Governor’s ill-advised legislation to increase AZ’s sales tax. Americans for Tax Reform set up an action page citizens can visit to speak out against the tax hike.

* Bob Weeks over at Voice for Liberty in Wichita points out that Sedgwick County, Kansas has placed its check register online. Inquiring minds can sort data by function, category, fund, or vendor.

**MORE UPDATES!!!**

* The Ocean State Policy Research Institute is tracking RI stimulus spending through their newest website, RIStimulus.org.

* Duval County celebrated its “A-” rating from SunshineReview.org, which was the highest grade given in the state of Florida, and the only county that had complete information about lobbyists on its Web site. Only one Florida county, Suwannee County, should be embarrassed by not having a web presence.

Rhode Island shows spending online

Almost one year ago, I was present for a meeting between the Ocean State Policy Research Institute and State Treasurer Frank T. Caprio. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how Caprio could best fulfill his campaign promise of increasing transparency for Rhode Islanders. Today, the plans discussed in that meeting have come to fruition in the Treasury Online Checkbook, a tool that allows the public to view Treasury’s Accounts Payable expenditures.

“We believe firmly that transparency, and the accountability it inspires, are not just good for government, but good for Rhode Island,” said Caprio.

Exactly. I also was pleased to see that SR earned a spot in the site’s FAQ page for detailing states with spending online. Rock on!

Double Duty for Rhode Island Open Books

I wrote about a new transparency site for Rhode Island last week, but neglected to mention the other groundbreaking site there- the Ocean State Policy Research Institute‘s Transparency Train. This website works to publicly display budgets, payrolls, contracts and the monthly check registers for every city, town and school district in Rhode Island.

It looks like Rhode Island has twice the transparency now, which is outstanding. I can’t wait to see what’s uncovered with these two sites sniffing out waste and inefficiency.

Rhode Island Follows the Money Trail

The Rhode Island Statewide Coalition (RISC) has released The Money Trail, a transparency website aimed at giving Rhode Islanders more information on how their government spends taxpayer dollars at multiple levels, as well as providing a platform for educated action. According to their website, The Money Trail works to track government budgets, actual expenditures, payroll, contracts, comprehensive plans, tax delinquencies, and foreclosures at the state, municipal and school district levels. You will also find report cards on government compliance with this transparency initiative, as well as the fiscal health of each government entity.

Seems like a giant step forward for a tiny state.