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.

Oklahoma: Transparency in schools needed, not more cash

A friend of mine that is a school superintendent always grumps and grouses when I push him to open up his school’s books to taxpayers. He’s generally a good government guy, and has even lobbied for sunshine legislation in other areas, but seems to have a real problem with demands for school transparency. My argument to him is always this: Using our education dollars wisely, including through competitive bidding and purging wasteful expenditures, increases the value each student receives through those tax monies. More efficiency = more dollars in classrooms = better education for the next generation of leaders. Apparently, I am not the only one that feels this way.

Yesterday, an editorial titled “Money grab: Millions more won’t satisfy union” ran in The Oklahoman, calling out the Oklahoman Education Association for pushing through the HOPE ballot initiative. This initiative would, according to Ballotpedia.org, “amend the state constitution and require the Legislature to fund public education to at least the per-pupil average of neighboring states.” That would mean a huge increase in education spending for the state of Oklahoma.

More money is great, right? Well, not so fast.

Groups like Oklahomans for Responsible Government, Americans for Prosperity-OK, The OK State Chamber, and the American Federation of Teachers as well as many legislators and newspapers have come out against the initiative because they say it would bankrupt the state and put existing projects and proposals on the chopping block. Another, very important reason these groups are in opposition is because Oklahoma does not currently require transparency in education dollars, leaving taxpayers in the dark on how their money is spent now. No new transparency will be required with the new proposal- just more money.

The Oklahoman editorial sums it up well: (I’m borrowing liberally- hope the ed board doesn’t mind…)

Supporters want to raise the per-pupil spending in Oklahoma to the regional average at an estimated cost of $850 million annually. Organizers say the extra money will come from growth revenue. But it seems much more likely that the change would require tax increases, starving other public services. No doubt voters will be hearing more about that in the next two years, and they should listen.

Everyone wants public schools to have what they need. Education is vital to our state’s future well-being. But more money is not a guarantee that teachers will have needed supplies, that the best teachers are in the classroom or that students will get a better education. And no matter how much money schools get, union officials won’t ever think it’s enough.

If the OEA wants more credibility, they need to be open to taxpayers. If they need suggestions on how to do this, check out the Texas Budget Source and the North Dakota Policy Council‘s Sunshine on Schools.

Read unbiased information about the OEA HOPE ballot initiative here.