By Chris Cargill
Have you ever tried to read your local school district budget? Districts are required to produce budgets – and make them public.
But school district budget documents are a maze of numbers and legal jargon – if you can even find them. Depending on the district, they can be hidden on websites, and only accessible if you know where to look.
When you finally do track down the document, it can be very difficult to read and understand. Idaho’s largest school district, the West Ada School District, has a budget that can be found online, but it is 336 pages long and includes six different funds and 36 different programs. In Montana, the Billings Public School district is the state’s largest. Finding its budget on the district’s website is nearly impossible.
Unfortunately, transparency doesn’t mean much if it’s not understandable.
In 2021, Idaho legislators passed HB 73, which tasks the state Controller to create a uniform accounting, budgeting, and financial reporting procedure. It is expected to be completed by January of 2025, and it will be another tool available to track results and demand accountability.
Idaho state Controller Brandon Woolf says: “My team has been working alongside the State Board of Education and the State Department of Education to ensure aggregate and transactional data are available on our new Local Transparency website. Between now and the project completion date of January 2025, the team, will be phasing all school districts/charters towards uniform reporting.”
The release of all public data is paramount, but for working families and concerned citizens, certain data points are most important and should be easily found and understood – without a calculator or a degree in accounting.
A natural next step to HB 73 that legislators in Idaho and, in reality, all states could pursue would be a Public School Transparency Act. This simple step would help taxpayers and parents determine whether their local district has enough funds and whether it is properly spending the cash in the classroom.
As part of this idea, all public school districts would be required, both on the first page of their budget and also on the front page of the district’s main website, to report six simple things:
1. Amount of total dollars (all funds – local, state and federal) spent by the district that year
2. Amount of total dollars spent per student, per year
3. Amount & percentage of total dollars allocated to average classroom
4. Average administrator salary & benefits
5. Average teacher salary & benefits
6. Ratio of administrators to teachers to students
Very little extra work would be needed to provide this data and make it accessible on paper and online. Most districts already have it hidden somewhere in their budget documents. They know where to look, whereas parents and taxpayers can get lost. In the interest of transparency, school districts should be eager to share this information with the public.
Parents and taxpayers may see this data and conclude their school districts need more resources. Others may see it and believe that not enough is being done to spend money in the classroom. Regardless, the community will have a broader sense of the results being achieved, and what – if any – changes need to be made.
Education leaders like Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield have told the Montana States Policy Center they support the concept.
“It’s a positive for our schools if the communities they serve understand how tax dollars are being spent,” Critchfield said. “Let’s face it, school budgets tend to be complex and this is a step that helps simplify the way they’re communicated publicly.”
Transparency can help improve student outcomes. After years of school shutdowns, controversial curriculum, and questions about resources, one thing is certain – the public needs more information to improve education.
Chris Cargill is president of the Mountain States Policy Center.
