{"id":2320,"date":"2019-07-17T20:14:08","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T20:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/?p=2320"},"modified":"2024-10-15T22:02:11","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T22:02:11","slug":"transparency-is-a-must-with-taxpayers-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2019\/07\/17\/transparency-is-a-must-with-taxpayers-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Transparency is a Must with Taxpayers Money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Education Week <\/em>recently\nposed a pivotal question: \u201cWhere, exactly, do those billions of dollars\ntaxpayers annually spend for schools go?\u201d Those in charge of the funds\nsometimes don\u2019t even know.&nbsp; For example,\nin Mississippi the state education department \u201cmiscalculated\u201d the exact dollar\namount it would take to contribute a \u201c$1,500 bonus\u201d to teachers. Lawmakers with\ninquiries about the mistake were directed to the antiquated 20-year-old\nstudent-information system which the Mississippi Governor, Phil Bryant, referred\nto as being \u201cheld up by a Band-Aid\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As we\u2019ve reported on before, taxpayers need to know where\nrevenues from their taxes are being spent\u2014especially the annual per student\neducation spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, antiquated systems track billions of dollars of\neducational spending with little transparency from lawmakers creating funding\npolicies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To overcome this obstacle, a very helpful resource to\nimprove transparency is the Statewide Workload\/Staffing\/Finance report from the\n<a href=\"\/Users\/enutley\/AppData\/Local\/Microsoft\/Windows\/INetCache\/Content.Outlook\/K5W2DGCQ\/fiscal.wa.gov\/K12.aspx\">Legislative\nEvaluation and Accountability Program (LEAP)<\/a>,\nwhich is part of the Office of Financial Management here in Washington State. Though\nintended for Washington State, the resource should be expanded to other states.\nUsers will find that its four major sections clarify most significant questions\none could have about education spending: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first section, <em>Workload\/Staffing\/Finance<\/em>,\nbreaks down spending per student four sub-sections: total state general fund\nrevenues, total federal general fund revenues, local taxes, and other revenues.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next section, <em>Expenditures\nper Full-Time Enrollment,<\/em> compares each district to other comparable\ndistricts and to the Statewide general fund expenditures. In this section you\ncan see the amount of money spent per FTE enrollment based on \u201cteaching,\nteaching support, food services, pupil transportation, utilities, unit\nadministration and central administration\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The third section is <em>Expenditures\nand Revenues, <\/em>ranging from the school year of 2010-11 to the present,\nhighlighting in a visual graph based on \u201cActivity Group by School Year.\u201d This\ngraph explains where the revenues have increased and which group it has gone to\nfrom the year 2010 to 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The last section, <em>Average Salaries for Full-Time Teachers<\/em>, displays a graph for base salary and additional salary that can be viewed statewide and by district, showing the increases in teacher pay overtime.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This resource is easy to navigate, includes up-to-date and accurate data, and it addresses what \u00a0<em>Education Week<\/em> describes in the title of the aforementioned article as \u201cGaping Holes in How States Track K-12 Spending.\u201d I believe the question now is, are lawmakers willing to navigate these tools themselves and be transparent with their respective communities?  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Education Week recently posed a pivotal question: \u201cWhere, exactly, do those billions of dollars taxpayers annually spend for schools go?\u201d Those in charge of the funds sometimes don\u2019t even know.&nbsp; For example, in Mississippi the state education department \u201cmiscalculated\u201d the exact dollar amount it would take to contribute a \u201c$1,500 bonus\u201d to teachers. Lawmakers with inquiries about the mistake were directed to the antiquated 20-year-old student-information system which the Mississippi Governor, Phil Bryant, referred to as being \u201cheld up by a Band-Aid\u201d. As we\u2019ve reported on before, taxpayers need to know where revenues from their taxes are being spent\u2014especially the annual per student education spending. Instead, antiquated systems track billions of dollars of educational spending with little transparency from lawmakers<a class=\"ellipsis article-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2019\/07\/17\/transparency-is-a-must-with-taxpayers-money\/\"><span> Read More &rsaquo;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":2321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1062],"class_list":["post-2320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-policy"],"acf":[],"author_names":["Bailey Takacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2320"}],"wp:action-assign-author":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/2320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}