Hurley Report Texas Education Accountability Project Paper

7/31/2019 Hurley Report Texas Education Accountability Project Paper

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No Financial Accountability

Why Texas K-12 public education lacks any real fnancial accountability and the implications

or both the ongoing public school fnancing litigation and the uture o our State.

Mark P. Hurley

Yvonne N. Kanner

Jonathan Yu

Texas Education Accountability Project

March 2012


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Texas Education Accountability Project

The authors would like to thank Tom Luce, Jerry Farrington, Lori Fey, Dr. Lori Taylor and Stuar tLea or their help with this study. While each provided invaluable insights and perspectives,

any shortcomings o this report are solely our own.

Mark P. Hurley

Yvonne N. Kanner

Jonathan Yu

Mark P. Hurley, Yvonne N. Kanner and Jonathan Yu are co-ounders o the Texas EducationAccountability Project.

Copyright Texas Education Accountability Project, 2012This material is or your private inormation, and we are not soliciting any action based

upon it. Opinions expressed are our current views only, at the time o writing. The materialenclosed is based upon inormation that we consider reliable, but we do not represent that

it is accurate or complete, and it should not be relied upon as such.


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Texas Education Accountability Project i

Contents

Executive Summary ........................................................ 1

I. Introduction .............................................................5

II. A system o fnancial reporting that produceslittle useul inormation ............................................ 9

III. Potential solutions .................................................18

IV. Conclusion .............................................................20

Appendix A ................................................................. 22Recommended Changes to the Format and Structure oSchool District Annual Financial Reports


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ii Texas Education Accountability Project

Index o Exhibits and Schedules

Exhibit 1 to Appendix A Major Spending Categories ..................24

Schedule A Compensation Expenses .......................................... 25

Schedule B Teacher, Administrator and Sta ProessionalDevelopment Expenditures ...............................................................27

Schedule C Expenditures or Equipment and FacilitiesUsed Directly in Teaching and Associated Maintenance Costs ............30

Schedule D Expenditures or Equipment and Facilities Not UsedDirectly in Teaching Students and Associated Maintenance Costs .......31

Schedule E Athletic Facility Acquisition and Maintenance Costs ....32

Schedule F Student Transportation Costs ................................... 33

Schedule G Expenditures on School-Provided Meals ....................34

Schedule H Purchases o Supplies and Materials DirectlyUsed or Teaching Students .............................................................35

Schedule I Purchases o Supplies and Materials NotDirectly Used or Teaching Students .................................................. 36

Schedule J Costs Associated with Oversight o theSchool District ................................................................................37

Schedule K Services Provided by Outside Contractors .................38

Schedule L Expenditures on Athletics and ExtracurricularActivities.........................................................................................39

Schedule M Long-Term Funding Costs ........................................40

Schedule N Expenditures rom Shared Services withOther School Districts and Governmental Agencies ............................ 41

Schedule O Costs Resulting rom Other GovernmentalAgencies ........................................................................................42


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Texas Education Accountability Project 1

Although Texas spends $55B per school year on K-12 public education,

there is no transparency or fnancial accountability or how this money

is actually used.

Executive Summary

Texas has been embroiled in a multi-decade legal and political battle overthe unding o public education. The Texas Supreme Court has concluded

that to be constitutional, the system o unding K-12 public education mustbe ecient, suitable and adequate. However, the Court dened theseterms very broadly. It also declined to provide any quantiable metrics by

which to evaluate whether the system meets these criteria.

As outside but interested observers, we at the Texas Education AccountabilityProject (TEAP)1 ound the ongoing legal battle intriguing because the

plaintis to date have ailed to propose any quantiable metrics to addressthe eciency and suitability o the current system and have oered onlyvery limited ones or evaluating its adequacy. Nor has anyone provided any

useable inormation which would allow either the Legislature or the cour tsto measure how changes in unding might directly translate into changes in

the quality o education provided to students.

Certainly, various parties have pointed to disparities in spending perstudent as well as the relative perormance o students in dierent school

districts on standardized tests.2 However, the Court has already ruledthat per student spending and test scores alone are not dispositive. Moreimportantly, none o the plaintis has even attempted to show that they

use their current unding eciently and thus, only i they receive additionalresources will they be able to provide a suitable and adequate education

or their students.

Consequently, we thought it might be useul i an outside group independentlyconducted a detailed review o how Texas schools spend the billions odollars o unding that they receive. O course we recognize that there is

not a perect correlation between the amount o money spent or evento some degree how the money is spent on educating students and the

resulting outcomes. But at the same time, a precondition to improving anysystem o public education (much less making it conorm to the States

constitution) is to rst understand how current resources are being usedand compare that with the results that they produce.

Our goal was to identiy a set o quantiable metrics that could be used inevaluating the eciency, suitability and/or adequacy o the current system

as well as any new system the Legislature might devise. To do this, wespent two years gathering and analyzing nancial data rom school districts

across our State.

1 By way o background, TEAP is a nonprot, nonpar tisan organization. Our goal is to utilize the private sector experience o our members in order tomake some small contribution to improving public education in our State. Our members do not directly or indirectly provide any services, supplies orequipment to schools or in any other way nancially benet rom K-12 Texas public education. Rather, we earn our livings investing capital into privatecompanies unrelated to education.

2 In order to support these arguments, some plaintis have relied on academic studies that employ macro-econometric models based on aggregatestatistical data across many school districts.

We wanted to

understand how

Texas K-12 public

education dollarsare currently used.


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2 Texas Education Accountability Project

No real fnancial accountability in Texas public education

What we ound was startling namely, there is no real nancial accountabilityor K-12 public education in Texas. In a system o public education that inaggregate spent nearly $55B3 in the 2008-2009 school year and which

increased spending per student by nearly 63% over preceding decade

(almost twice the rate o infation), it is almost impossible or any averagecitizen who does not work or a school district to have any idea o howtaxpayer unds are used.

To be sure, the current system o reporting generates tremendous amountso data and each school district is required to publish an annual nancial

report that has been independently audited. However, or several reasonsthe system produces little useul inormation, precluding both transparency

and accountability.

First and oremost, the primary nancial disclosure document producedby school districts their annual nancial report does not provide anaverage citizen with any real insight into how a particular school district

uses its unding. These documents uselessly aggregate the overwhelmingpreponderance o the school districts expenditures into a small number

o individual line items, each with comorting-sounding names such asInstruction and School Leadership. In other words, the documents do

not tell the reader what the district purchased. Rather, all that is disclosedis the generic purpose o the expenditures.

For example, according to the Comptrollers oce on average 56% oTexas school districts expenditures are incorporated into their annual

reports in the single line item o Instruction. Under current TexasEducation Agency rules, school districts are required to include in this

line item 29 dierent categories o expenditures. In addition, they areallowed to add into Instruction any expenditure which ts the very broad

denition o providing direct interaction between sta and students toachieve learning. Our review o a group o school districts supportingdocuments (general ledgers and check registers) used in preparing their

annual reports ound that expenditures included in Instruction rangedrom hotel and travel costs to general supplies to Xmas Sta Gits and

even a Magic Show.4

The paucity o the inormation provided to citizens by school districts onhow taxpayer unds are actually used is particularly surprising given thatthey regularly collect immense amounts o nancial data. Their general

ledgers track every expenditure made and accompanying these entries area series o object codes that are either very specic (i.e., cell phone

allowances, print shop expenditures, water, sick leave, etc.) or extremelybroad (general supplies, contracted services, other operating expenses,

etc.). In the general ledgers that we reviewed, every expenditure hadboth a unction code (i.e., Instruction, Curriculum Development,School Administration, etc.) and an underlying object code. Much o this

inormation, in turn, is captured in databases maintained by the TEA.

3 Financial Allocation Study o Texas

4 The authors would like to emphasize that in no way are we suggesting that the school districts that we reviewed are misreporting their nancial data.Rather, it is the repor ting rules that they must ollow are what preclude any nancial transparency and/or accountability.

We discovered that

only those who work

or a school district

have any idea how

it actually uses its

unding.

More than hal

o a typical

school districts

expenditures are

disclosed in a single

line item o its annual

report.


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Transparency a precondition to fnancial accountability

Unortunately, no average person has the time or resources necessary toanalyze even a raction o this data. But without such a orensic accountingexercise, it is impossible to determine relatively simple things such as

how much o the districts unding is used to pay teachers solely to teach

vs. what it costs to insure drivers education vehicles (both o which areclassied as Instruction expenditures), much less what is the districtspending money on that is essential vs. optional. 5

For many good reasons, our States system o public education is basedon local control that is, local school districts and not some centralized

authority determine, given their individual demographics, location,economics and other actors, the best way to educate students. Ideally,

local control allows parents input into how their children are educatedand how their school districts should best use taxpayer unds. However,

a precondition to nancial accountability under such a structure is that anaverage citizen be able to understand exactly how his or her school districtspends money, something precluded by the current system o nancial

reporting.

The uninormed being evaluated by the equally uninormed

Also consider or a moment the larger implications o what we ound: TheLegislature somehow must design an ecient, suitable and adequate

system o unding Texas public education while at the same time possessingno real idea o how school districts currently spend taxpayer money. Equallyproblematic, the courts somehow must evaluate the constitutionality o

whatever the Legislature produces but they have no better inormationthan that on which the Legislature must rely. The resulting process can

be best characterized as the uninormed being evaluated by the equallyuninormed.

Most importantly, the economic uture o our State is dependent on havinga well-educated populace. But without any useul inormation o how we

currently spend our education dollars, whatever system the Legislaturedevises will be at best arbitrary and will likely do little to improve education

in Texas.

A simple solution

There is, however, a simple solution to this dilemma: x the current system

o nancial reporting. These changes should be guided by one simple,overarching principle: the primary purpose is to produce inormation that

allows an average citizen to easily understand exactly how his or her schooldistrict spends taxpayer money.

Only i and when the system meets this standard will there ever be realnancial accountability in K-12 public education. Additionally, only with

these changes will the system generate the necessary inormation that will

5 In act, we concluded ater nearly two years o research that the only way TEAP even though we invest in companies or a living would ever be ableto gure out exactly how a school district was spending taxpayer money would be to recreate a new general ledger (and rom that an annual nancialreport) by beginning with the thousands o underlying receipts rom all o a districts individual purchases and expenditures.

Although there is a

great amount o data,

there is almost no

useul inormation.

It is impossible to

improve education

in Texas unless we

improve fnancial

accountability.


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allow the Legislature to design a system o unding public education thatis constitutional.

We would recommend that at a minimum:

(i) School district annual nancial reports must be redesigned in six

ways:

a. The line items included in the summary pages o the reports

should be tied to specic types o expenditures and not simplytheir general purposes;

b. Each o these line items should be accompanied by a schedulewith numerous sub-line items which detail precisely how the

unds were used;

c. The annual report should include key output metrics includingthe numbers o students taught in dierent types o classes;

d. It should also include a detailed organizational chart or thedistrict;

e. It should list any and all agreements with non-district employees

and entities as well as the amounts paid and services and/orproducts received;

. For those districts which share services with other schooldistricts and government agencies, their annual report should

have a separate set o detailed disclosures describing whatwas purchased and how the unds provided were used.

(ii) The coding in school districts supporting documents (i.e., general

ledgers and check registers) should likewise be changed so to createan easy audit trail that ties individual expenditures into the sub-lineitems o the supporting schedules in the districts annual nancial

report. Only by doing this can an outsider easily determine not only towhom or to what money was paid but also or what exact purpose; and

(iii) School districts should be required to make their nancial reports,

major contracts and supporting documents easily accessible onlinethrough the individual districts website.

We have included in this report a series o proposals to address theseissues.

School district annual

fnancial reports mustbe changed in six

ways.


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I. Introduction

Texas has been engaged in a our decade political and legal battle overhow much it must spend on public education, how those monies shouldbe allocated and rom where all o this unding is going to come. Poor-

er districts have argued that the states historical system o unding

K-12 public education is unconstitutional because o its reliance on localproperty taxes which, in turn, creates a vast disparity in the amounts spenton educating students in public schools in dierent parts o the state.

Their litigation culminated in the landmark Edgewoodcases which orcedthe Legislature to materially alter how public education is unded.

The resulting system was and remains to put it mildly extremelyunpopular and controversial. Relying on a series o ormulas that are

altered in every Legislative session and that are almost indecipherable, theprogram nicknamed Robin Hood takes unding that would have otherwise

been used to educate students in wealthier districts and transers it to lessafuent ones.

Robin Hood spawned a series o additional lawsuits claiming that thissystem o unding public education violated the States constitution

because it de acto imposed a state property tax. The Court agreed that,as then structured, Robin Hood violated the States constitution. It also

indicated that the K-12 public education system in general required bothstructural changes and new sources o unding because it was on the cusp

o being inadequate.

At the same time, however, the Courts guidance to Legislature was

airly non-specic. It determined that there is a constitutional obligationthat Texas system or providing ree public education meets three key

standards: (i) eciency; (ii) suitability; and (iii) adequacy.

The Court dened eciency as the meaning o eective or productive oresults and connotes the use o resources so as to produce results withlittle waste. It explained that in order to be suitable the public school

system be structured, operated and unded so that it can accomplish itspurpose or all Texas children and that an adequate education system is

one that achieves a general diusion o knowledge. Exactly how the thencurrent system o unding public education must be changed to meet these

criteria was let up to the Legislature as the Court claimed that it lacked thebasis or declaring what education or nance systems will alonesatisy[the Constitutions] standards.

Court has let it to others to propose quantifable metrics

However, these rulings made it clear that the Court decided that it was not

its job to redesign the Texas system o public education and that the Courtwas unwilling to propose any quantiable metrics by which to measurewhether any system would be constitutional. More specically, the Court

provided no guidance as to the types o skills that students must acquire much less how one should measure whether these skills have been

achieved to meet the constitutional requirement o achieving a generaldiusion o knowledge. It likewise provided no metrics on how to measure

eciency. Instead, it let it to others to propose their own ideas.

System o unding

public education

must be efcient,

suitable andadequate.


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Perhaps because the ruling was so broad, the Legislature subsequentlyelected to only marginally change the structure o unding or public

education. The resulting legislation required school districts to graduallylower their maximum property tax rates or school maintenance andoperation and (at least theoretically) replaced that revenue through a

combination o new state taxes.

Lack o clarity + less unding + higher standards = more lawsuits

The non-specicity o the Courts ruling also made it inevitable that,regardless o whatever the Legislature did, there would be additional legalchallenges. The potential or more litigation was urther enhanced because

the Legislature had to cut more than $5B in public education unding overthe next biennium in order to balance the States budget. In addition, at

the same time it substantially raised the education standards or Texashigh schools through a program called College and Career Readiness

Standards (CCRS).

Consequently, late last year and early this year a furr y o new litigation was

led. Although each o these lawsuits rely on dierent bases or challengingthe public system o education, they all claim that it either ails to meet

the three criteria outlined by the Court, or that in attempting to meet thesecriteria, it violates some other aspect o the States constitution.

Texas Education Accountability Project (TEAP)

We at the Texas Education Accountability Project (TEAP) have dared to wadeinto the middle o this debate. By way o background, TEAP is a nonprot,

nonpartisan organization. Our goal is to utilize the private sector experienceo our members in order to make some small contribution to improving

public education in our State. Our members do not directly or indirectlyprovide any services, supplies or equipment to schools or in any other way

nancially benet rom K-12 Texas public education. Rather, we earn ourlivings investing capital into private companies unrelated to education.

Our members (like anyone else who has studied the current system opublic education) see that it is rie with problems that must be solved

and the current quality o education provided to many students in someschool districts is abysmal at best. And certainly, the level o resources

that school districts have at their disposal to educate students variesimmensely across our State, with some school districts clearly having todo a great deal with very little.

As interested observers o the battle being waged in the Legislature and

the courts over public education, we were surprised that the participantsin this debate have provided to date only very limited quantiable metrics

to support their arguments. No one has proposed any methodology ormeasuring eciency and/or suitability. Those who have tried to quantiyadequacy have relied on very broad econometric models that purport

to correlate education outcomes and dierent spending levels. Moreimportantly, no plainti has even attempted to demonstrate that it uses its

current unding eciently and, thereore, only with additional unding can itprovide a suitable and adequate education or their students.

Multiple new lawsuits

have been fled,

challenging the

constitutionality ocurrent system.

None o the plaintis

have proposed

metrics to determine

efciency or

suitability.


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O course, plaintis have also pointed to spending per student and therelative perormance o students in dierent school districts on standardized

tests. However, the Court has already ruled that per student spending andtest scores alone are not dispositive.

Independent review o the data

Consequently, we at TEAP thought it might be constructive to have anoutside group independently examine how Texas school districts currently

spend taxpayer dollars. We spent almost two years collecting and analyzingnancial data across multiple school districts throughout Texas. Our goalwas to identiy a series o potential metrics or benchmarks that could be

used to better measure the eciency, suitability and adequacy o the currentsystem and, thereby, assist both policymakers and jurists in ashioning a

unding mechanism or public education that would meet its constitutionalrequirements. Ideally, these same metrics could also be used to improve

how we educate children in our State.

Our analysis quickly evolved into an exercise in orensic accounting. We

looked at the audited nancial reports or individual districts as well asthe Texas Education Agencys rules or reporting. We also delved much

more deeply into the numbers by comparing the nancial reports o severalindividual school districts with their supporting documents including

their general ledgers, check registers, the superintendents employmentagreement, the structure o the districts employee benet programs and

how they accounted or shared services and supplies, etc.

No real fnancial accountability or public education in Texas

What we ound was quite dierent rom what we had expected. More

specically, we discovered that there is currently no real nancialaccountability or K-12 public education in Texas.

Certainly, school districts currently generate oceans o nancial dataand each school district must prepare an annual nancial report which

is independently audited. Unortunately, however, the current system onancial reporting produces no useul inormation, making it impossible

or anyone who does not work in the district to have any real idea o how itspends taxpayer unds.

As we will explain later in greater detail, three ndings led us to thisconclusion:

(i) The primary disclosure document produced by school districts

their annual report tells the average citizen very little on exactlyhow a particular school district uses its unding;

(ii) Although school districts regularly track thousands o pieces onancial data in their general ledgers and check registers and

much o that data is captured in databases maintained by theTexas Education Agency (TEA), it is just that, raw data. No average

person has the time and resources to analyze a raction o it. Butwithout a detailed orensic accounting analysis this mass o data

provides no useul inormation; and

TEAP spent two years

reviewing school

district fnancial data.


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(iii) Some but not all school districts make it extremely dicult oroutsiders to obtain their nancial data.

The uninormed being evaluated by the equally uninormed

Consider or a moment some o the consequences o our ndings. The Texas

system o public education is based on the concept o local control thatis, instead o relying on a centralized authority, each district determinesthe best way to educate its students given its geography, demographics,

economics and other actors. Ideally, local control allows parents input intohow their children are educated and how their school districts should bestuse taxpayer unds.

Clearly, a precondition to nancial accountability in a system based on local

control is that average citizens must be able to understand exactly howtheir school district spends money. Unortunately, the current system o

nancial reporting precludes any such understanding.

Further, the Legislature likewise has no better inormation with which to (re)

design the system o unding public education. However, whatever it devisesmust produce results with little waste, although it lacks any ability to

measure or evaluate exactly how the money it appropriates is employed. Italso must create a system that accomplishes its purpose and produces

a general diusion o knowledge without the ability to measure preciselywhat is being done to educate students with the dollars provided.

Equally problematic, the courts must evaluate the constitutionality owhatever the Legislature designs but has no better inormation than

that on which the Legislature must rely. The resulting process can bebest characterized as the uninormed being evaluated by the equally

uninormed.

More importantly, whatever the Legislature and the courts arrive at willbe at best arbitrary and will likely do little to improve education in Texas.It also will invariably lead to more lawsuits challenging the new systems

constitutionality.

A simple solution

However, there is a simple solution to this dilemma: x the current systemo nancial reporting in public education in Texas. It should be redesignedso that the inormation that it provides allows the average citizen to easily

understand how his or her school district spends taxpayer money. Later inthis report we will outline a series o proposals to address these issues.

Both the Legislature

and the courts lack

the inormation

required to design a

constitutional system.


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II. A system o fnancial reporting fnancial thatproduces little useul inormation

School districts in Texas report their fnancial data using the PublicEducation Inormation Management System (PEIMS). Designed by the

Texas Education Agency (TEA), the systems purpose is to track a wide

variety o inormation rom school districts across the state includingstudent demographics and academic perormance, personnel,fnancial and organizational inormation.

School districts track all o their expenditures in their general ledgersand check registers. The data is used in preparing the districts primary

fnancial disclosure document, an independently audited annualfnancial report. The manner and ormat used by school districts to

prepare this repor t is prescribed by the TEAs Financial AccountabilityResource Guide (FARG).

As described in the FARG, the goal o all this work and expense is tocommunicate adequate inormation to user groups to enable them to

assess the perormance o those par ties that have been empoweredto act in the place o the citizenry. Further, the reporting is not an

end in itsel but, rather helps ulfll governments duty to be publiclyaccountable. It also is designed to help satisy the needs o users

who have limited authority, ability, or resources to obtain inormationand who thereore rely on the reports as an important source o

inormation.

Finally, the FARG also identifes the three primary target audiences or

the districts annual fnancial reports:

(i) Citizens o the school district (taxpayers, voters, servicerecipients, media, advocate groups, and public fnance

researchers)

(ii) Direct representatives o the citizens such as legislatures

and oversight bodies (state legislatures, school boards)

(iii) Creditors (individual and institutional investors, bond ratingagencies, intergovernmental grantors)

Simply put, the consumers o tax dollars namely, the school districts are accountable to their constituents, elected ofcials and creditors.

In order to be accountable, the districts are obligated to providefnancial disclosure in such a manner so that someone who does not

work in the district on a day to day basis can understand how thesetax dollars are being used.

Three reasons why the current system fails to meet its own

stated objectives

Unortunately, or three reasons the current system o public

education fnancial reporting alls ar short o meeting theseobjectives. First, the rules on how school districts are required

to prepare their annual fnancial reports eectively preclude

Only i citizens can

understand how tax

dollars are used canschool districts be

accountable.


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any transparency on how school districts actually spend theirmoney. Second, although school districts amass large amounts o

fnancial data in their check registers and general ledgers (much owhich is captured by databases maintained by the TEA), it is justthat, raw data. Absent a detailed orensic accounting analysis

something impractical or most people the data provides no useul

inormation. Finally, Texas school districts are not required to maketheir fnancial data easily accessible to outsiders.

Issue I Disclosing only the general purpose of spending and

not what exactly was purchased

I you pick up a copy o a school districts annual report, you will fndmany similarities to that o the fnancial report o any public company.

The report includes basic fnancial statements as well as notesexplaining in greater detail some o the data that was incorporated in

the summary pages.

But, unlike a public company, school districts do not have income

statements because they are not intended to make money. Instead,the basic fnancials include a Statement o Revenues, Expenditures

and Changes which both describes the sources o the districtsrevenues and its expenditures in that school year.

This page o its annual fnancial report is the primary way in which

school districts disclose how they spent taxpayer money. It is alsoa key reason why there is no real fnancial accountability or publiceducation in Texas.

Vast number of different types of expenditures crammed into

individual line items of disclosure

More specifcally, as currently designed, the expenditures listed in thispage o the report are crammed into a small number o individual lineitems with comorting sounding names such as Instruction, School

Leadership, Curriculum and Sta Development, etc. But these lineitems do not tell the reader how the money was spent; rather, they

only disclose the general purpose o the spending.

More problematic, they provide only very limited additional inormationon exactly how the district used its unding, although there are notesand additional schedules to the annual repor t. Consequently, the reader

has no idea o ver y basic items such as how much is being spent to payteachers to teach or what are the overhead costs o the district.

In addition, no outsider reading this report has any idea o how to

determine which activities that are being unded by the district arenecessary and essential to educating students versus those that arenice and useul but, in reality, are optional to getting a good education.

Further, the disclosure provided makes it impossible or anyone tomeasure how efciently the school district is using its unding.

For example, according to the Comptrollers ofce, on average about

56% o school districts expenditures were included in a single line

Annual fnancial

reports disclose only

the general purpose

o spending and not

what was purchased.


15/48


item o their annual fnancial report. With the ubiquitous title oInstruction, this line item aggregates, at a minimum, 29 dierent

types o expenditures including:

1. Paying regular and/or substitute classroom teachers;

2. Paying teacher aides;

3. Paying classroom assistants;4. Paying graders;5. Paying sta working in the classroom on a dedicated

basis;6. Paying adult basic education teachers;7. Paying teachers that deliver instruction by television or

satellite;8. TI-IN services provided by education service centers;

9. Classes taught to students by education service centers;10. Special education instructional services, including speech

occupational and physical therapy;11. Upkeep and repairs to instructional materials and

equipment in the classroom;

12. Instruction in health;13. Field trips;

14. Band instruments purchased by the school district ordonated by band boosters or other groups;

15. Instructional computer networks;16. Sotware;

17. Licensing ees;18. Maintenance and supplies or instructional computer

networks;

19. Paying sta and instructional computer lab teachers;20. Paying network managers or instructional networks;

21. Paying technology coordinators or instructional networks;22. Testing materials or tests developed and administered by

teachers;23. Salaries or instruction including that portion o the salary

or the regular school day that is or teaching physical

education courses or credit when athletic activities aretaking place;

24. Instructional supplies including but not limited toclassroom supplies, grade books, grade book sotware,

report cards, student handbooks and related costs;25. Insurance or drivers education vehicles;26. Graduation expenditures/expenses;

27. Pre/post-employment physicals or personnel classifed inthis unction;

28. Drug testing or personnel classifed in this unction; and29. Purchase o vehicles or instructional purposes, including

driver education.

Wide variety of other types of expenditures included in

Instruction

Instruction, however, is not limited to only these kinds oexpenditures. So long as any expenditure alls into the category o

providing direct interaction between sta and students to achieve

29 categories o

spending are included

in the Instruction

line item o the

report.


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learning, it qualifes to be lumped into this single line item o a schooldistricts annual report.

Our analysis o general ledgers o a cross section o school districtsound that they included all kinds o expenditures in Instruction in

their annual fnancial reports. A small sample o the examples that we

uncovered included:

1. Magic show ($2,700.00)

2. Pictures ($250.00)3. General Supplies ($280,000 in aggregate across multiple

entries)

4. Hyatt Regency ($273.20)5. Primetime Entertainment Center ($143.20)

6. Agape Tours ($3,300)7. Radisson Hotel and Suites ($502.44)

8. Hilton Anatole ($627.84)9. Postage ($1,750.00)10. Puppets-LIBR-MS ($313.17)

11. Xmas Sta Gits ($138.53)

All o these expenditures may in reality provide direct interaction betweensta and students to achieve learning and thus, these school districts

reporting is consistent with their rules or nancial disclosure. However,what is also clear is that no outsider would have any idea i this was the

case.

Further, how could anyone who does not work in the district be able to

separate out essential unctions such as teachers salaries versus non-essential items such as cars or drivers education or even magic shows

or Xmas Sta Gits? This kind o nancial repor ting is the antithesis otransparency.

Most o the remaining expenditures are likewise crammed into

only a ew line items

TEAs reporting rules require that school districts aggregate most o their

remaining expenditures into a relatively small number o other line itemsin their nancial disclosures. For example, the second largest category o

expenditures was Instructional and Media Resources. Under the TEAsrules, there are (at a minimum) sixteen dierent kinds o expendituresincorporated, including the salaries and costs associated with:

1. Librarians;

2. Library aides and assistants;3. Media or resource center personnel who work in an audio visual

center, television studio or related work study areas;4. Substitute pay or library sta;5. Selecting, preparing, cataloging and circulating books and other

printed materials;6. Planning the use o the library by students, teachers and other

instructional sta;7. Building individuals ability in their use o library books and

materials;

Travel, postage,

puppets and

magic shows are

also included in

Instruction.

Most o the remaining

expenditures are

crammed into a

handul o line items.


17/48


8. Selecting, preparing, maintaining and making available tomembers o the instructional sta equipment, lms, lmstrips,

transparencies, tapes, TV programs, sotware, CD/DVDs andsimilar materials;

9. Planning, programming, writing, and presenting educational

programs or segments o programs by closed circuit or broadcast

television;10. Studio crews that record educational programs or segments

o programs by closed circuit or broadcast television including

those or TI-IN;11. Library books, lms, video cassettes, CD/DVD disks and, other

media that are maintained by a resource center or library;

12. Supplies or binding and repairing books or other media containedin resource centers;

13. Upkeep and repairs to media, library and resource centermaterials and equipment;

14. Media and Living Science services provided by an educationcenter;

15. Pre-post-employment physicals or drug testing or personnel in

this unction;16. Purchase o vehicles or instructional resources and media

purposes.

However, this list is not all-inclusive. Also included in this line item areany and all expenses that are directly and exclusively used or resource

centers, establishing and maintaining libraries and other major acilitiesdealing with educational resources and media.

How do you determine i an automobile is solely or sta

development?

Consider also how school districts report what they spend on developing

their curriculums and improving the quality o the sta which provideinstruction. Included (but not limited to) in the Curriculum Developmentand Instructional Sta Development line item are: the costs o outside

consultants, curriculum coordinators who are not responsible orsupervising instructional sta, Assistant/Deputy Superintendents or

Curriculum, tuition and ees paid by instructional sta to attend college,upkeep and repairs o equipment used or curriculum development or in-

service training, paid sabbatical leaves or instructional sta and evenpurchases o vehicles or sta development or curriculum developmentpurposes.

Lets put aside or the moment the question o how a school district

might determine that the purchase o a vehicle was solely or stadevelopment purposes. But when an annual report mixes into a single

line item o disclosure everything rom the cost o paid sabbaticals orteachers to the maintenance costs o certain types o equipment to thecosts drug testing, how can any outsider have any idea as to what exactly

are a districts spending priorities?

Also consider the line item (School Leadership) o the annual nancialreport that any outsider would likely assume as most associated with

overhead namely the administrators who are not involved in teaching

Sixteen categories

o spending

are included inInstructional and

Media Resources.

With so many types

o expendituresmixed together, it

is impossible to

determine what

is necessary vs.

optional.


18/48


students. While it is extremely broad, it is not all inclusive. For example,encapsulated in it are the costs o principals, assistant principals and

related sta as well as those sta who track student attendance.

However, not included in this line item is that part o the superintendents

salary or perorming administrative duties directly related to the

superintendency as well as other salaries and expenditures related tothe oce o the superintendent and salaries related to the budgeting,accounting and scal aairs and related to human resources. This

category also excludes the cost o those sta members who prepare thesuperintendents annual repor t.

Loosely translated, this means that someone must divine how mucho a superintendents time is spent on school leadership (and any

associated costs) separately rom any costs associated with the time thata superintendent spends on administration. We nd all o this remarkable

given that superintendents are almost by denition administrators wholead their districts and that the necessary time and eort required toparse through these denitions probably could be put to much better use

in educating our children.

Line item with the least transparency

As bad as all o these examples o how school districts are requiredto disclose their non Instruction expenditures, they are downright

transparent when compared with Payments to Fiscal Agent/MemberDistricts o Shared Ser vices Arrangements. This line item is used whena school district outsources any unctions to another school district. All

o the costs associated with doing so are aggregated into a single lineitem.

To reiterate the school districts annual report does not disclose what

services it is buying, the other school districts involved and how and orwhat purpose the money was used. Rather, so long as it shares serviceswith another school district, its annual repor t simply discloses the total

dollars involved.

As innocuous as this may sound, we ound that several school districtshad about 20% o their aggregate expenditures included in this line item.

In other words, the districts nancial repor t simply discloses that it paidanother district(s) one out o every ve dollars that it spent that year toperorm some unknown services or the district. It is unclear how a set o

accounting rules could make a school districts nancial disclosures lesstransparent but it would denitely take much imagination and creativity.

Illegal or publicly traded companies

What all o these examples mean is that a school districts annual nancialreport again, its primary nancial disclosure document provides no

useul inormation as to how it actually spends taxpayer dollars. It is alsoa bit bizarre that the State relies on such an opaque system o nancial

disclosure or public education when one considers what would happeni the management o a public company tried to likewise aggregate so

much o its expenditures into so ew line items o its primary nancial

There is almost no

disclosure about

more than one fth

o some districts

expenditures.


19/48


6 To better understand just how much more publicly-traded companies disclose in their nancial statements as compared to Texas school districts,consider the reports provided by a great Texas-based company, Whole Foods. Although it is in a erociously competitive business and (understandably)

wants to provide its competitors with as little inormation as possible, a small por tion o its annual disclosures includes: direct store expenses, G&Aexpenses, pre-opening expenses, relocation, store closure and lease termination costs, costs o goods and store occupancy costs, average pre-openingexpense per store, its average pre-opening rent per store, stores opened, acquired, divested, relocated and closed, remodeled stores with majorexpansions, total gross square ootage in stores, the sales mix between stores, number o stores in development, their average size and the total grosssquare ootage in development, percentage sales by product category (non-perishables, prepared oods and baker y and other perishables), store salesgrowth by year over the last ten years, adver tising as a % o revenues and compared with peers, contributions to not-or-prot organizations as a % oprots, number o stores by state, return to shareholders compared with peer benchmarks, sales growth, identical store sales growth, sales increasesrom stores acquired over the previous 52 weeks, direct sales expenses as a percentage o sales, wage expenses as a percentage o sales, workerscompensation expense as a percentage o sales, inventory valuation and methodology employed, impairment o long-lived assets, long-lived assetsand sales domestically and in oreign countries, construction accruals, intangible asset depreciation, accretion o interest on existing reserves and newclosures, rental expenses, deerred tax assets, stock options granted, exercised, expired and oreited and weighted average exercise price or eachand aggregate intrinsic value, restricted stock grants, stock purchase plan shares, 401(k) plan contributions, equity compensation plans and exhibitsdetailing each o the material contracts that company has entered into. Additionally, it publishes an annual proxy statement that provides detailedinormation on executive compensation, directors and corporate governance.

disclosure documents (i.e., annual report, 10K, 10Q, etc.) with noadditional detailed disclosure.

It is quite probable that the management o the company would acecivil sanctions rom the SEC and even potential criminal ones rom the

Department o Justice. Fur ther, it is also highly likely that the company would

quickly nd itsel in a class action lawsuit or inadequate and misleadingnancial disclosure. But in the Texas system o public education, makingsuch grossly insucient nancial disclosure is not only acceptable under

the current rules or nancial reporting, it is required.6

Issue II Immense amounts o data but no useul inormation

It is particularly surprising to us that Texas school districts provide no

useul inormation in their annual reports on how they spend taxpayerdollars given that they regularly track and record immense amounts o

data. All o their individual expenditures are captured in their generalledgers and check registers. It is rom these supporting documents thatthe data incorporated into annual reports is drawn.

For example, one smaller school district that we reviewed had about $6.3M

o aggregate expenditures in the 2009 2010 school year. But a reviewo its general ledger only reveals who or what got paid but not what or. A

handul o example entries in the ledger included:

1. HITEQ Computer Systems $870.952. Masterscapes $596.02

3. Roberts Truck Center $1932.504. Roberts Truck Center $4,550.00

5. Roberts Truck Center $512.446. Webb Electronics $7,579.00

7. Webb Electronics $1,670.008. John Deere Govmt and Ntl Sales $3611.949. Altons Sewing Machine $300.00

10. JRnR Electronics $68.0011. Interstate Battery $84.69

12. School Specialty Supply $1768.1813. CDW Government $3,330.00

14. Future Pro $3,285.0015. Academic Superstore $542.00

What is illegal or

public companies ismandatory or Texas

school districts.


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16. Curriculum Support $3,581.4217. Group Logic $2,695.50

18. Loews Home Center $515.9919. Loews Home Center $887.0720. Wireless Generation $2,562.50

21. CDW Government $1,400.00

22. CDW Government $2,818.6023. HP Direct $2,267.00

However, as with all o the general ledgers and check registers that wereviewed, each o these expenditures recorded in these documentswere accompanied by two types o codes. The rst, a Functional code,

indicated the general purpose o the spending, tying it to the correspondingline item o the districts annual nancial report. The expenditure also had

an Object code, that is either very specic (i.e., cell phone allowances,print shop expenditures, water, sick leave, etc.) or extremely broad (general

supplies, contracted services, other operating expense, etc.). Much o thisinormation, in turn, is captured in databases maintained by the TEA.

As noted earlier, the school districts and TEA combined gather an immenseamount o nancial data but it provides non-experts with little useul

inormation or two reasons. First, the average citizen lacks the time orresources necessary to analyze even a raction o it. But absent such a

orensic accounting exercise, it is impossible to determine relatively simplethings such as how much o the districts unding is used to pay teachers

solely to teach vs. what it costs to insure drivers education vehicles (botho which are classied as Instruction expenditures), much less what isthe district spending money on that is essential vs. optional.

Second, even i someone had the time and resources to wade through

all o this data, the codes currently used in tracking expenditures are onone hand too specic and in other instances are too broad to allow a

non-expert to ormulate a coherent understanding o the school districtsspending. In other words, one may be able to tell that this school districtpaid Group Logic $2,695.50 or something that is classied in the districts

annual nancial report as Instruction and has an object code o otherexpense. However, knowing this tells you ver y little as to what the district

purchased and why.

In act, we concluded ater nearly two years o research that the only wayTEAP even though we invest in companies or a living would ever be ableto gure out exactly how a school district was spending taxpayer money

would be to recreate a new general ledger (and rom that an annual nancialreport) by beginning with the thousands o underlying receipts rom all o a

districts individual purchases and expenditures. But i someone is goingto have to do all o this in order to understand how a district spends money,

why even bother to produce the current reports?

It is impossible or

an average citizen

to determine what a

school district pays

its teachers solely to

teach.


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Issue III It can be very difcult or outsiders to access school

district fnancial data

In researching this report we requested nancial inormation rom manyschool districts across the State. As part o this, we led numerous Texas

Open Records requests.

Our experience in collecting this inormation was that the response thatwe received rom the school districts was somewhat binary. Several school

districts were extremely responsive and helpul. At the same time, gettingnancial data rom about hal o the school districts that we contacted wasquite dicult.

The latter group o school districts typically employed one o two tactics: (i)

simply ignore the Open Records request or (ii) make a determination thatproviding this data (which it likely already has on a hard drive on one o its

computers) will take many, many hours to produce. Thus, i the requestingparty wants the inormation it must pay as much as $10,000 to get it.

In either case, the only way to get them to comply with our inormationrequests would have been or TEAP to hire an attorney and ormally le

a complaint. Fortunately, we never had to resort to doing so because werequested inormation rom so many di erent school districts that eventually

we were able to get a large enough sample o data to write this report.

However, it is somewhat outrageous that some school districts are allowedto make it dicult or outsiders to access their nancial inormation.Imagine i you are an average citizen trying to gure out how your local

school district is spending your money and or what purpose. It is unlikelythat you would ully understand how the Texas Open Records requests work

and even less likely that you could aord to hire an attorney to orce theschool district to comply with the request.

School districts are spending someone elses (i.e. the taxpayers) money.It is their duty to make their nancial data as easily accessible as possible

to their constituents.

Some school districts

either ignore requests

or fnancial data or

make getting it very

expensive.


22/48


III. Potential solutions

Although the current system o nancial reporting or Texas K-12 publiceducation is problematic, xing it is not a Herculean task. As noted earlier,school districts already regularly collect immense amounts o data. The

key challenge is synthesizing this data in a manner so that it is useul

inormation that would allow an average citizen to understand in detail howhis or her school district uses taxpayer dollars.

We would recommend that three steps be taken to x the current systemo nancial reporting:

A. The ormat and data included in the annual fnancial reports

published by each school district must be changed. School

districts should be required to disclose substantially more detailedinormation on how they spend taxpayer unds. As part o this,

(i) The line items in the summary pages o their annual nancialreports should be altered to refect the specic type o expenditure

involved instead o just a general purpose such as Instruction;

(ii) Accompanying each o these line items should be a schedule withnumerous sub-line items that provide much greater detail as to

how and why the money was spent;

(iii) Annual nancial reports should also include key school districtoutput metrics in terms o the numbers o students educated bytypes o classes by grade;

(iv) An organization chart should also accompany the annual report that

would provide an overview o the structure o the school district, alist o teachers by school and the non-teaching proessionals (by

position) who work in the school district;

(v) A list o all contracts with school district vendors and non-employees,

the amounts paid to each and the specic services and/or productsreceived should be included in a separate schedule o the annual

nancial report; and

(vi) For those districts which share services with other schooldistricts and government agencies, their annual report shouldbe accompanied by disclosures which provide similar inormation

as described in (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) above detailing what waspurchased and how the unds provided were used.

We have included in Appendix A detailed recommendations o what should

be incorporated into school district annual reports.

B. The coding currently used by Texas school districts with their

general ledgers and check registers should be modifed. In lieuo the current unction and object codes should be coding which

ties individual expenditures into both the major line items o theschools annual report but also into its sub line items. Doing so

will create a clearer audit trail that, in turn, would allow a parent

The structure o

school district annualfnancial reports must

be revamped.


23/48


to more easily understand the specic purpose o an individualexpenditure i he or she wants to research the school districts

spending in greater detail. It will also make it easier to comparehow individual districts use their unding.

C. Texas school districts should be required to post their key

fnancial data (annual reports, general ledgers, check registers,fnancial source data, contracts with outside vendors and with

senior district and school sta, etc.) or the trailing three years

on their websites. Virtually every school district already has awebsite. It should not be controversial that they be required toprovide their nancial data so that outsiders can easily access it.


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IV. Conclusion

We began this study assuming that the nancial data currently generatedby school districts could be used to help improve education in our State.As we have described, what we ound was both surprising and alarming.

Texas currently has a K-12 education system which consumes (accordingto the Comptrollers oce) in excess 43% o Texas general revenues andin aggregate spent nearly $55B in the 2008-2009 school year. But no one

who does not work or any individual school district has any real idea oexactly how that district spent its part o this money. Consequently, wehave no way to determine whether that money was used intelligently, much

less eciently. It is likewise impossible or someone to determine whetherwhat we currently spend money on are things that are essential to the

diusion o knowledge rather than optional or unnecessary.

Fixing the current system o nancial reporting so as to create true nancialaccountability should not be controversial or either the property-rich orproperty-poor school districts. For the latter, they need to be able to clearly

demonstrate and quantiy that they are using the unds they currently receivein an ecient manner and that absent additional unding they will never be

able to properly educate their students. Otherwise, the only nancial metricthat they can point to is aggregate dollars spent per student, something

that is very limited in describing the quality o education being provided.

More importantly, the Texas Supreme Court has already ruled that theStates constitution does not include a requirement o equality o unding.Instead, the constitutional standard o eciency requires substantially

equivalent access to revenue only up to a pointand that individual schooldistricts can and must be able to take steps to enrich the education

o their students. Thus, although disparities between school districts inthe money spent per student on education is a actor that the Court will

consider when determining the constitutionality o a system or undingpublic education, it is by ar not the only actor.

On the other hand, the primary outcome to date or the proper ty-rich schooldistricts rom this decades-long legal battle has been that large amounts o

money that they would have received otherwise have been transerred toproperty-poor districts through Robin Hood and its successors. And there is

a real possibility that the in some uture ruling the Court could acceleratethis trend.

Consequently, the wealthier districts likewise have a compelling interest tond a way to address the constitutionality o the system that goes beyond

just dollars spent per student. They need to be able to rame the argumentrom the context o what precisely is needed to be done to educate students

in a constitutional manner and what specic unding is required to providethese services. However, the current system o nancial accountability orTexas public education does not produce the necessary inormation to

make this case.

Fixing the current

system o fnancial

reporting is in the

best interests o both

property-poor and

wealthy districts.


25/48


More lawsuits ahead

Regardless o whether either the property-rich or property-poor districts arewilling to embrace real nancial accountability, anyone worried about ourStates system o public education has a compelling interest that these

changes be made. Without any useul inormation o how taxpayer unds

are used to educate students, the Legislature will be unable to devise asystem that is ecient, suitable and adequate and the courts likewisewill be unable to determine i it is constitutional. Thus, i and until the

current system o nancial reporting is xed, any uture mechanisms orunding public education in our State will remain in constant limbo, subjectto repeated legal challenges.

More importantly, our State has nite resources and it must allocate them

across a wide set o priorities. Consequently, it will be quite dicult or anyelected ocial to build a consensus that we need to spend more money on

public education i there is no way o accurately and clearly demonstratingthat we are using the current dollars allocated to K-12 public education inan intelligent manner.

Finally, beyond just the legal and political questions, the uture economic

vibrancy o our state in no small way depends on having a well-educatedpopulace. In order to do this we have to nd a way to get the maximum

benet rom the dollars spent on public education. But until we knowexactly how the money is being used, we will never be able to determine

what needs to be done to improve the system.

Creating a

consensus to

spend more money

on education is

predicated on

demonstrating that

current unding

is being used

intelligently and

efciently


26/48


Appendix A. Recommended Changes to the Formatand Structure o School District Annual FinancialReports

In thinking about how to best redesign the current reporting and disclosure

rules which Texas school districts must ollow, we at TEAP began with what

the Texas Education Agency (TEA) claims should be the standards that anysystem o nancial reporting should meet. More specically, TEAs ownmanual points to accountability as the paramount objective o nancial

reporting by state and local governments. But to be accountable nancialreporting should communicate adequate inormation to user groups toenable them to assess the perormance o the governmental entity such

as a school district. Moreover, the TEA argues that nancial reportingis not an end in itsel but is intended to provide inormation useul or

many purposes that helps to satisy the needs o users who have limitedauthority, ability, or resources to obtain inormation and who thereore rely

on the reports as an important source o inormation.

In other words, any rational system o nancial reporting or Texas school

districts should be designed so that it provides sucient inormation toallow its three primary constituencies namely, the citizens o our State,

direct representatives o our citizens such as members o the Legislatureand oversight bodies and creditors o the school districts to ully evaluate

the nancial perormance o these governmental entities.

However, we would propose an even simpler standard: An average citizenshould, ater reading his or her school districts annual nancial report,have a clear understanding o exactly how it is spending taxpayer dollars.

Six structural changes to school district annual reports

With this in mind, we propose six changes to the school district annual

report ormat. First, the report should include a list o major spendingcategories with titles tied to the specic type o expenditure (as opposedto its general purpose) such as Compensation Expenses, Teacher,

Administrator and Sta Proessional Development, Costs Associatedwith Oversight o the School District, etc. In Exhibit 1 to this Appendix A,

we have provided our recommendations as what should be included in themajor spending categories.

Second, each these major spending categories should be accompaniedby a separate schedule that has numerous sub-line items, each refecting

a specic type o nancial expenditure. For example the CompensationExpenses line item should be broken into multiple sub-line items ranging

rom salaries paid to teachers solely or teaching to benets or schooldistrict support sta. Our recommended sub-line items or each major

spending category are also shown in Exhibit 1 to this Appendix A.

Third, every annual report should include an organizational chart and

narrative that allows outsiders to understand the operating structure othe school district. The narrative should provide an overview o the number

o students per school by district, teachers by school, non-teachingproessionals by school, non-teaching support sta by school, the number

o proessional sta at the district level and the number o support sta at

The goal: Can an

average citizen

understand exactly

how a school district

uses taxpayer

dollars?


27/48


the district level. The organization chart should include a list o teachersand administrators by position by school as well as a list o all o the

proessional sta by position at the school district level.

Fourth, every school district should have separate disclosure pages in its

annual report listing every agreement with non-district employee contractors,

the expenditures involved, the specic services and/or products providedto the district, when the contract was most recently awarded or renewed,whether at the time o the most recent award or renewal it was competitively

bid and any and all political contributions made by the contractor to theelection campaigns o any school board members o the district.

Fith, the annual nancial report should include detailed lists o the coreoutputs o the district namely, the courses taught that year by grade;

the number o each taught; and the number o students who successullycompleted each. These classes should be divided by type, grade, and

category (i.e., core curriculum, college preparatory, advanced placementcourses, vocational, etc.). Additionally, this set o disclosures shouldinclude how many students were tutored either individually or in small

groups outside o the normal school curriculum. Finally, the narrative shouldprovide detailed inormation on the per ormance o students in the school

district on standardized tests.

Lastly, the annual nancial reports o those school districts which employshared services agreements with other school districts or governmental

agencies should include an additional set o disclosures. As part o this,the entity providing these services should be required to provide the sameinormation (i.e., general categories o spending, accompanying schedules,

organizational chart, detailed description o outputs and all contracts withoutsiders, their cost and the services provided) that is included or the

districts other expenditures.

Annual fnancial

reports should include

an organizational

chart, lists o classes

taught and disclose

both agreements with

outside contractors

and other school

districts.


28/48


Exhibit 1 to Appendix A

Major Spending Categories

1. Compensation Expenses

2. Teacher, Administrator and Sta Proessional Development Expenditures

3. Expenditures or Equipment and Facilities Used Directly in Teaching Students and Associated

Maintenance Costs

4. Expenditures or Equipment and Acquisition Not Used Directly in Teaching Students and Associated

Maintenance Costs

5. Athletic Facility Acquisition and Maintenance Costs

6. Student Transportation and Healthcare Costs

7. Expenditures on School-Provided Meals

8. Purchases o Supplies and Materials Directly Used or Teaching Students

9. Purchases o Supplies and Materials Not Directly Used or Teaching Students

10. Costs Associated with Oversight o the School District

11. Services Provided By Outside Contractors

12. Expenditures on Athletics and Extracurricular Activities

13. Long-Term Funding Costs

14. Expenditures rom Shared Services with Other School Districts and Governmental Agencies

15. Costs Resulting From Other Governmental Agencies


29/48


Schedule A Compensation Expenses

Specifc disclosure line items:

1. Salaries paid to teachers or teaching classes. (This line item should exclude any compensation paid

to teachers or non-teaching activities e.g., coaching sports, supervising extracurricular activities,

etc. any compensation or tutoring or examination preparatory classes, as well as any perormancebonuses.)

2. Benets paid to teachers. (This line item should likewise exclude that portion o any benetspaid to teachers or non-teaching activities including as well as any expenditure or proessionaldevelopment.)

3. Salaries paid to teachers or tutoring students.

4. Salaries paid to teachers or examination preparatory classes.

5. Salaries paid to teaching assistants and teachers aides.

6. Benets paid to teaching assistants and teachers aides.

7. Salaries paid to guidance counselors.

8. Benets paid to guidance counselors.

9. Salaries paid to coaches o athletic teams.

10. Benets paid to coaches o athletic teams.

11. Salaries paid to librarians.

12. Benets paid to librarians.

13. Salaries paid to school nurses and health sta.

14. Benets paid to school nurses and health sta.

15. Compensation paid to individuals or their work in student extra-curricular activities, not includingcoaching athletic teams.

16. Salary paid to the District Superintendent.

17. Benets paid to the District Superintendent.

18. Salaries paid to District Assistant Superintendents.

19. Benets paid to District Assistant Superintendents.

20. Salaries paid to School Principals by individual.

21. Benets paid to School Principals by individual.

22. Salaries paid to School Assistant Principals.


30/48


Schedule A Compensation Expenses

(Continued)

23. Benets paid to School Assistant Principals.

24. Salaries paid to District-level administrative sta.

25. Benets paid to District-level administrative sta.

26. Salaries paid to School-level administrative sta.

27. Benets paid to School-level administrative sta.

28. Salaries paid to District-level support (e.g., janitorial, security, etc.) sta.

29. Benets paid to District-level support sta.

30. Salaries paid to School level support sta, not including any compensation to individuals or theirwork in the preparation and delivery o school-provided meals to students.

31. Benets paid to School-level support sta, not including any benets provided to individuals or their

work in the preparation and delivery o school-provided meals to students.

32. Perormance bonuses paid to teachers by individual.

33. Perormance bonuses paid to teaching assistants and teachers aides by individual.

34. Perormance bonuses paid to guidance counselors by individual.

35. Perormance bonuses paid to coaches o athletic teams by individual.

36. Perormance bonuses paid to librarians by individual.

37. Perormance bonuses paid to school nurses and health sta by individual.

38. Perormance bonuses paid to individuals or their work in non-athletic extra-curricular activities byindividual.

39. Perormance bonuses paid to District Superintendent.

40. Perormance bonuses paid to District Assistant Superintendents by individual.

41. Perormance bonuses paid to School Principals by individual.

42. Perormance bonuses paid to School Assistant Principals by individual.

43. Perormance bonuses paid to District-level administrative sta by individual.

44. Perormance bonuses paid to District-level support sta by individual.

45. Perormance bonuses paid to School-level administrative sta by individual.

46. Perormance bonuses paid to School-level support sta by individual.


31/48


Schedule B Teacher, Administrator and Sta Proessional Development Expenditures


1. Tuition and ees paid or teacher continuing education.

2. Travel costs associated with teacher continuing education.

3. Tuition and ees paid or teacher undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

4. Travel costs associated with teacher undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

5. Tuition and ees paid or teacher aide and teaching assistant continuing education.

6. Travel costs associated with teacher aide and teaching assistant continuing education.

7. Tuition and ees paid or teacher aide and teaching assistant undergraduate and/or post-graduateeducation.

8. Travel costs associated with teacher aide and teaching assistant undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

9. Tuition and ees paid or guidance counselor continuing education.

10. Travel costs associated with guidance counselor continuing education.

11. Tuition and ees paid or guidance counselor undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

12. Travel costs associated with guidance counselor undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

13. Tuition and ees paid or athletic team coach proessional development.

14. Travel costs associated with athletic team coach proessional development.

15. Tuition and ees paid or librarian continuing education.

16. Travel costs associated with librarian continuing education.

17. Tuition and ees paid or librarian undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

18. Travel costs associated with librarian undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

19. Tuition and ees paid or nurse and health sta continuing education.

20. Travel costs associated with nurse and health sta continuing education.

21. Tuition and ees paid or nurse and health sta undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

22. Travel costs associated with nurse and health sta undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

23. Tuition and ees paid or sta or proessional development related to extracurricular activities.

24. Travel costs associated or proessional development related to extracurricular activities.


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(Continued)

25. Tuition and ees paid or District Superintendent continuing education.

26. Travel costs associated with District Superintendent continuing education.

27. Tuition and ees paid or District Superintendent undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

28. Travel costs associated with District Superintendent undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

29. Tuition and ees paid or Assistant Superintendent continuing education.

30. Travel costs associated with Assistant Superintendent continuing education.

31. Tuition and ees paid or District Assistant Superintendent undergraduate and/or post-graduate

education.

32. Travel costs associated with District Assistant Superintendent undergraduate and/or post-graduate

education.

33. Tuition and ees paid or School Principal continuing education.

34. Travel costs associated with School Principal continuing education.

35. Tuition and ees paid or School Principal undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

36. Travel costs associated with School Principal undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

37. Tuition and ees paid or School Assistant Principal continuing education.

38. Travel costs associated with School Assistant Principal continuing education.

39. Tuition and ees paid or School Assistant Principal undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

40. Travel costs associated with School Assistant Principal undergraduate and/or post-graduateeducation.

41. Tuition and ees paid or District-level administrative sta continuing education.

42. Travel costs associated with District-level administrative sta continuing education.

43. Tuition and ees paid or District-level administrative sta undergraduate and/or post-graduateeducation.

44. Travel costs associated with District-level administrative sta undergraduate and/or post-graduate

education.

45. Tuition and ees paid or School-level administrative sta continuing education.

46. Travel costs associated with School-level administrative sta continuing education.

47. Tuition and ees paid or School-level administrative sta undergraduate and/or post-graduate

education.


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(Continued)

48. Travel costs associated with School-level administrative sta undergraduate and/or post-graduateeducation.

49. Tuition and ees paid or District-level support sta continuing education.

50. Travel costs associated with District-level support sta continuing education.

51. Tuition and ees paid or District-level support sta undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

52. Travel costs associated with District-level support sta undergraduate and/or post-graduateeducation.

53. Tuition and ees paid or School-level support sta continuing education.

54. Travel costs associated with School-level support sta continuing education.

55. Tuition and ees paid or School-level support sta undergraduate and/or post-graduate education.

56. Travel costs associated with School-level support sta undergraduate and/or post-graduateeducation.


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Schedule C Expenditures or Equipment and Facilities Used Directly in Teaching and Associated

Maintenance Costs


1. Purchases, leases, and/or licenses or computers and sotware used directly in teaching students.

2. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with computer hardware andsotware maintenance and support used directly in teaching students.

3. Purchases and/or leases o audio visual equipment and sotware used directly in teaching students.

4. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with audio visual equipmentand sotware maintenance and support used directly in teaching students.

5. Purchases and/or leases o other electronic equipment and sotware used directly in teaching

students.

6. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with the maintenance and

support o other electronic equipment and sotware used directly in teaching students.

7. Purchases and/or leases o non-electronic classroom equipment.

8. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with the maintenance andsupport o non-electronic classroom equipment.

9. Purchases and/or leases o vehicles used in drivers education.

10. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with the maintenance andsupport o vehicles used in drivers education.

11. Fuel costs associated with vehicles used in drivers education.

12. Purchases o band and orchestra instruments.

13. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with the maintenance andsupport o band and orchestra instruments.

14. Purchases o other band and orchestra equipment including uniorms.

15. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with the maintenance andsupport o band and orchestra equipment including uniorms.

16. Capital expenditures on classroom acilities.

17. Non-compensation expenditures associated with classroom maintenance and upkeep provided by

district employees.


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Schedule D Expenditures or Equipment and Facilities Not Used Directly in Teaching Students and

Associated Maintenance Costs


1. Purchases, leases, and/or licenses or computers and sotware not used directly in teaching

students.

2. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with computer hardware and

sotware maintenance and support not used directly in teaching students.

3. Purchases and/or leases o audio visual equipment and sotware not used directly in teaching

students.

4. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with audio visual equipmentand sotware maintenance and support not used directly in teaching students.

5. Purchases and/or leases o other electronic equipment and sotware not used directly in teachingstudents.


support o other electronic equipment and sotware not used directly in teaching students.

7. Purchases and/or leases o non-electronic equipment not directly used in teaching students.

8. Expenditures (other than compensation or district employees) associated with the maintenance andsupport o non-electronic equipment not used directly in teaching students.

9. Purchases and/or leases o vehicles other than those used in drivers education or those used intransporting students to and rom school.


support o vehicles other than those used in drivers education and in transporting students to androm schools.

11. Fuel costs associated with the use o vehicles other than those used in drivers education andtransporting students to and rom schools.

12. Capital expenditures on administrative acilities.

13. Capital expenditures on all other non-athletic acilities.

14. Non-compensation expenditures associated with administrative and all other non-athletic acilitymaintenance and upkeep provided by district employees.


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Schedule E Athletic Facility Acquisition and Maintenance Costs


1. Capital expenditures on athletic acilities by sport.

2. Non-compensation expenditures by sport associated with athletic acility maintenance and upkeepprovided by district employees.


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Schedule F Stud

Documents

Hurley Report Texas Education Accountability Project Paper