School district websites
From Sunshine Review
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As a school district resident, parent, teacher, student or taxpayer, you need to be able to adequately gauge whether your school district is:
- Effective.
- Competent.
- Frugal with tax revenues.
- Honest.
- In compliance with all expectations and relevant laws about public records and open meetings.
That means you need to be able to find key pieces of information on your school district's website.
Information that should be available on website
Budget
The school district website should include comprehensive budget information.
- The budget for the current fiscal year should be posted online.
- Budgets for previous years should be posted online.
- It should be very easy for people to find this information when they visit the website. This means that prominent navigational features enabling someone to locate the budget should be included on the homepage of the website.
- Graphic features that compare the current budget to past year's budgets should be incorporated, to enable people to make sense of trends over time.
- Narrative features should be incorporated into descriptions of the budget. For example, if the current year budget is 1.2% higher, or 5% lower, or 14.7% higher than the previous year's budget, it is helpful to citizens to provide this comparative explanation at the beginning of a summary about the budget.
School district government meetings/agendas
The school district's website should disclose all school district government meetings and agendas.
- Time of meeting.
- Place of meeting.
- Agendas for all meetings that fall under rules about open meetings (which should be 99% of any government meetings);
- Whether the meeting is open or closed.
- Whether public input is allowed at the meeting and, if so, what the rules are that govern public input.
- Minutes of meetings should be recorded and posted online.
Who are the elected officials of the school district?
The school district's website should disclose key information about the school district's elected officials--the members of the school board or board of trustees.
- Their names.
- Contact information, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
- Terms of office and date of next election.
- If the elected officials are elected in partisan elections, the website should indicate their party affiliation.
- Any financial disclosures and conflict-of-interest statements that the school district requires of its elected officials should be posted online.
- Committee appointments.
School district administrators
The school district's website should include a section providing full transparency about the major administrative officials of the district. This would include the school district's superintendent, and other key administrative officials if relevant. The information that should be provided includes:
- A copy of the contract, if one exists, between the superintendent and the school district governing the terms of his or her employment, including salary information, job expectations, severance provisions and so on.
The website should also include adequate contact information about how to reach key school district administrators.
Lobbying/advocacy
- If the school district enters into a contract with a lobbyist or lobbying firm, full details of this arrangement must be posted on the school district's website, including the name of the lobbyist or lobbying firm, the amount paid to the lobbyist or firm, and the legislation that the lobbyist is advocating for on the taxpayer's dime.
- If the school district pays dues to belong to any taxpayer-funded lobbying associations, full details of these arrangements should be included on the school district's website, including the name of the association, the amount paid in dues, and an identification of what positions that lobbying association is taking with the money it has received from the school district's taxpayers via the dues paid to it by the school district.
- If the school district gives grants to non-profit organizations, these grants should be disclosed on the school district's website with a reason for the grant and information about who in the non-profit organization is responsible for oversight and administration of the funds it has received from the school district's taxpayers via a grant from the school district.
Access to government records and public documents
The school district website should include comprehensive information about how citizens can obtain access to public records in the custody of the school district.
- When a citizen wants to file an open records request, which employee handles those requests?
- What is that employee's contact information?
- The school district website should provide this information in a very easy-to-locate position on their website.
- The school district website should lay out the procedure for a citizen to follow who wants access to public records.
- The information should be user-friendly.
- The school district website should include an annual rating of its FOIA compliance: How many requests did it receive in a given year, how many did it comply with, the average time required for compliance, and reasons for denials. If the school district is currently being sued for failure to provide public documents, this information should be included.
- If the school district has been ordered by a judge or public records ombudsman to provide documents it refused to produce in response to a public records request, this information should be a permanent record posted on the school district's website.
Contracts with vendors
The school district's website should include a section where it provides comprehensive information about, and copies of, the school district's major contracts with vendors and suppliers.
It is important to avoid insider-dealing when a government is entering into contracts. Even at the local level, contracts can be for amounts in the tens of millions of dollars.
Contracts should be awarded to whichever corporation or individual can provide the highest quality work in the most cost-effective way. It's important to avoid granting contracts based on:
- Patronage
- Campaign contributions.
- To friends and relatives of members of the governing commission that ultimately approves all contracts.
The school district's website should inform residents about:
- Rules governing contracts.
- Bids and contracts for purchases over $10,000.
- Information about vendor campaign contributions to the school district's elected officials (school board members or trustees) should posted with contract information.
Examples of contracts that should be made publicly available on the school district's website include district's contracts with builders, suppliers, service companies such as those that provide bus transportation, catering or janitorial services, any contracts with private vendors for utilities, contracts with labor unions, etc.
Tax burden
The school district's website should include information about taxes:
- Information about all taxes levied by the school district.
Criminal background checks
The school district's website should include:
- Comprehensive information about its policies regarding conducting criminal background checks of staff employed by the school district.
- The policies should include information about how often criminal background checks are conducted and what procedures the district follows when it learns of past or current criminal conduct on the part of school district staff.
Academic performance
The school district's website should include information about the district's academic performance.
- What standardized tests are administered to students in the district?
- How do the scores on those tests taken by students in the district compare to students in other districts in the state, and nationally?
- How do the scores on the tests taken in the current year compare to the scores historically within the district?
- If there are other methods available within the state to comparatively assess the academic program and any weaknesses or areas that need improvement, that information should be included on the website.
Evaluate your school district's website
To find out whether your school district is responsible about providing key information to its residents and taxpayers:
- Click on United States.
- Find and click on your state.
- Once you do that, you'll find a navigational bar on the top of the screen.
- That navigational bar has a link to "school district".
- Click on that link to find a list of all the school district in your state.
- When you find your school district, the name of your school district will appear in either blue or red.
- It is appears in blue, that means someone else has already started writing on Sunshine Review about your school district.
- Click on the link to find out what they've written and to add your own information.
- If the article about your school district doesn't yet include a link to your school district's website, please add that link to the bottom of the page.
Adding information to Sunshine Review
- Log in to your Sunshine Review Account. This will allow you to edit (add information to) a page.
- Look at Alexandria, Louisiana as an example.
- For your school district, add information to your school district's page on Sunshine Review in the same manner that information was added to the Alexandria, Louisiana page.
If you add a line saying that "no budget was found" or "the school district's website has a budget for each of the last three years", you can also link to the place on the school district website where you found the budget.
If the school district's website has a budget, but it isn't searchable, or it only includes a budget for one year, or you have any suggestions for improving how the school district presents the budget, please note those recommendations or concerns on the Sunshine Review article about your school district.
