Education swamp pushes to kill spending transparency
Louisiana spends over $4 billion a year on K-12 education. Taxpayers and parents have a right to know where that money is going and how it is being spent—but the education swamp is pushing to ensure that never happens.
Go to the video here and jump to 1:54.
LASS Executive Director Mike Faulk testifies against school spending transparency bill.
HB 462 by Representative Rick Edmonds (R- Baton Rouge) would require public school boards to post education spending information online through a new user-friendly, searchable database that's available to the public.
Nearly every other state government agency already provides this information to the public through a website called Louisiana Checkbook. Back in 2018, when the Louisiana Legislature passed the law to increase government spending transparency, education bureaucrats fought hard to get themselves carved out, and nothing has changed since.
Today, under Louisiana's current reporting system, it is nearly impossible for parents to figure out how local districts spend their kids' education dollars. And that's exactly how the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents and the Louisiana School Boards Association want to keep it!
In an effort to kill HB 462, LASS Executive Director Mike Faulk pleaded with a Louisiana Senate Committee yesterday, citing "the possibility of additional staff" and vaguely referenced "unintended consequences" that could result from the transparency measure.
In his testimony, Faulk also suggested that may cost some districts up to $50,000 a year to hire someone to upload a spreadsheet to a website two times a year—which is patently absurd!
LSBA also submitted a red card to the committee signaling their opposition.
Ironically, just a few minutes after they fought against HB 462 to create education spending transparency, they also asked lawmakers for an additional $200 million—and they got it!
That's ridiculous. There should be transparency and accountability measures tied to our education dollars, and that's exactly what HB 462 does. Parents and taxpayers should not have to jump thru a bunch of bureaucratic hoops and pay thousands of dollars to find out what their child's public school is teaching or how much they are spending.
Despite the education swamp’s vague claims about "unintended consequences," it is obvious that they are opposed to spending transparency because they want to suppress information and make it as difficult as possible to access.
Parents and taxpayers should not allow that to happen because we can no longer afford to maintain the status quo.
With more than 24,000 Louisiana children trapped in low-performing or failing K-12 public schools today, it is clear that far too many of our kids aren't getting what they need to succeed. The movement toward improvement starts with knowing where our education dollars are going, and HB 462 will do just that! We deserve to know the truth about how our tax dollars are being spent in our schools.