A blog comment I felt worth posting:
Anonymous said...
The Need for Public School Financial Transparency
The Illinois government-run school system continues to resist financial transparency. Instead of fully disclosing how it’s spending $20 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money, they cry out for more. In the private sector there’s something called GAAP accounting practices. GAAP stands for “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.” In the government-run school system in Illinois we see PAAP – “Politically Accepted Accounting Principles.”
We’ve got a simple question: how can anyone not support full disclosure of all government revenues and expenditures? Yet when it comes to the public school spending crisis in Illinois, those who stand to personally profit from increasing taxes resist transparency. As one observer has stated, it’s time to “solve the lexicography of the dissemblers.” Currently there is no citizen oversight of government-run school spending, and there’s precious little effective school board oversight, either.
There should be a standardized accounting and full disclosure of all district revenues and expenditures (including the district’s check register) on the World Wide Web, including:
A list of all employees in an organizational chart.
Every classroom expenditure should be outlined.
Every contract – including those of administrators, should be posted in its entirety.
(It’s clear that many school boards prefer to keep some of the perks and some of the details of the benefit packages away from the public eye, since the scale of their generosity with money earmarked for educating kids would rouse ire on the part of the taxpayers.)
March 14, 2007 10:16 AM
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Excellent points and resolution.
It is my understanding, the same time the balanced budget is due from the schools in 2010, the state is going to require some sort of website posting of accounting from the schools.
It is suppose to be part of the total accountability package.
Do we dare to hope the we taxpayers may actually see how our dollars are spent?
Could this possibly be the reason the push is on for referendums to pass and money to be spent, before transparency is law?
