| The following report from www.peytonwolcott.com, based on feedback from school districts who have already posted their check registers online (superintendents, CFO's, other administrators, employees and trustees, is a random anecdotal sampling; feedback has been uniformly positive. |
| P E Y T O N W O L C O T T |
| H o w w e t a k e b a c k o u r c h i l d r e n ' s e d u c a t i o n -- o n e p e r s o n , o n e q u e s t i o n , o n e s c h o o l a t a t i m e . |
| Public school check registers online: 800 districts! 36 states! (March 2010) |
| FEEDBACK & COMMENTS FROM SCHOOL DISTRICTS POSTING THEIR CHECK REGISTERS ONLINE PUBLISHED AT www.PeytonWolcott.com |
How we take back our children's education: one person, one question, one school at a time. |
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| Local school district check registers online: An idea whose time has come. Is your district willing to be perceived by your community as being anti-transparency and anti-open government? |
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| MIAMI-DADE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS (Florida) Budget: $6.8 billion Students: 400,000 Superintendent: Alberto Carvalho. The 4th-largest public school district of the 15,000 in the U.S., Miami-Dade posted its check register online on January 14, 2008. Trustee Marta Perez brought this to then-superintendent Rudy Crew and the board; she is now vice chair. BESSEMER CITY SCHOOLS (Alabama) Budget: $44 million Students: 3,500 CFO Willie Davis posted his district's check register online in 2005 in Excel format as part of moving the district towards greater transparency and accountability; he reports no additional costs for providing this service; in 2009 the State of Alabama used his template for the rest of the state; he continues to lead by example. DALLAS ISD (Texas) The 2nd-largest public school district in Texas. Budget: $1.7 billion Students: 158,000 Superintendent: Eliu Misael "Mike" Hinojosa Fallout: "Everything's absolutely positive, and there's been no negative fallout--we're one of the first in the state to post our check register online," said a district spokesperson. Logistics, goals for the future: "We're talking to our IT people to see if we can simplify the process so that people can go to the online check register more quickly and directly." MARBLE FALLS ISD (Texas) Budget: $40.5 million Students: 4,000 Ryder Warren, superintendent: "We have had absolutely no issues." Kelly Fox, trustee: "Peyton is always innovatively at the cutting edge of the promotion of school reform. This is yet one more example of her efforts to improve the quality of our schools by championing open records of our spending. As a board member I highly recommend that all districts make their spending more transparent and be accountable to the taxpayers." SPRING BRANCH ISD (Texas) Budget: $300.6 million Students: 32,000 Duncan Klussmann, superintendent: "Posting our check registers online has been something that's worked for us with very minimal effort to get it up and running; I believe school districts are running moving in this direction. We try to be a very transparent district. We have a strong and supportive community, and we feel that being transparent supports that." Klussmann added that when he first came into education it was common for all checks to be included with the board packets and an approval item at board meetings. Obstacles and stumbling blocks: "Our financial software was older and DOS-based, not designed to generate reports, but once we got our first report as a model it went quickly." Special kudos: "We have a wonderful finance person, Karen Wilson, who took this on." Additional comments: "Anything we can do to take raw data as we're required to report it by the state and make it more accessible to our community is a benefit." Extra expense: None. Fallout? No increase in public records requests. "The only thing you do worry about is someone looking at something and not understanding; you'd sit down with the person and explain it to them." |
| CLOVIS USD (California) Budget: $300 million Students: 37,000 Clovis USD, north of Fresno in California's San Joaquin Valley, was among the first school districts in the nation to put its entire check register online -- a natural next step, according to a district spokesman, as part of its move to a paperless board packet. Check register information included: Check number, payee name, dollar amount, date, account. If there are questions about checks: We'd first invite them in and try to answer their questions. Bill McGuire, CFO: We completed posting to our website our check registers over 5 years ago as the 1st part of our electronic agenda. The board, district administration and community have been very supportive of our school district's providing as much information as possible in an electronic format. MONTROSE PUBLIC SCHOOLS (Michigan) Budget: $ 14 million Students: 1,900 Superintendent Mark Kleinhans was the first superintendent to post his district's check register online in Michigan. Problems reported: None. BIG SPRING ISD (Texas) Budget: $28.1 million Students: 3,900 Sandra Waggoner, chief financial officer: "Posting our check register online really isn't any extra work; it's the same check register we give our board each month, then we just PDF it to our webmaster." Sandra is BSISD's public information officer; the district only receives 3-4 ORR's per year. "Most are not people trying to stir up something, just, 'I'm curious.' " Logistics: BSISD's bookkeeper sends a PDF file to superintendent's secretary for TASB BoardBook, and sends a duplicate copy of the PDF file to the webmaster who uploads and creates a link so it's available for the public. Extra expense: None. Fallout? No increase in public records requests. Goals for the future: Keep each month's check registers online for one year. NEDERLAND ISD (Texas) Budget: $ 37.9 million Students: 5,100 Gail Krohn, superintendent: "I think it's important for a district to share pertinent financial information with the community and the taxpayers; that's what's important. I'm very proud of our business manager that she tries her very best to make things simple and understandable for the taxpayers of Nederland ISD." NEW CANEY ISD (Texas) Budget: $79.8 million Students: 8,700 Cindy Reynolds, secretary to superintendent/media relations "Posting our check registers online saves us some time on generating information that people might request otherwise. This is the best way to approach it. It never occurred to us to not post this public information. When you form partnerships with your community, you have to be above reproach. We're all partners, we're all taxpayers. We have to be accountable in all areas." Fallout? "Parents and support organizations question us from time to time regarding expenditures--not that we've been questioned on how but where--and they're certainly entitled to that information." Logistics: NCISD uses TASB's BoardBook software. Extra expense: None; check registers are a free feature of BoardBook. |