All but a few San Diego County school districts with a facilities bond program are being open about how they’re spending money, according to an annual report card published Thursday by the San Diego County Taxpayers Association.
Every year the association grades K-12 school and community college districts on how transparent they are about their bond programs, which are voter-approved and often involve hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for school facilities.
“A bad grade means that they’re not being transparent with the public. A good grade means they’re doing the things that they should be doing with oversight and sharing information,” said Haney Hong, the group’s president and CEO.
Mountain Empire Unified and Borrego Springs Unified, both rural districts with relatively small enrollment, got F grades. Sweetwater Union High, the county’s second-largest district, and Lemon Grove both received D grades.
Mountain Empire Superintendent Patrick Keeley said his district, because of its small size, does not employ a webmaster, so materials are not always uploaded to the district’s website.
Borrego Springs Superintendent Mark Stevens said he had no comment about the F grade. “Let them grade us however they want,” he said in an email.
Besides Fallbrook Union High, which got a C+, all other districts that were rated got grades of B or better.
Chula Vista Elementary, Grossmont Union High, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College, MiraCosta Community College, San Diego Unified and San Ysidro Elementary received A+ grades.
The taxpayers association reviews its findings with every school district before publishing the report card, Hong said.
Overall, San Diego County school districts have been improving their bond transparency in recent years, according to the report. The average transparency grade this year is 86 percent, up from 82 percent last year.
“Over the years we’ve seen grades get better and better … We’ve seen that positive trend, and that’s why we continue to do this work,” Hong said.
The taxpayers association’s report card calculates grades for school districts based on 27 criteria. The report card looks at, for example, whether the oversight committee posts online meeting agenda packets, meeting minutes, annual reports, audit reports and a list of bond projects and their progress.
The report card also looks at audits of the bond programs to see, for example, whether the audit itemizes expenditures by project and whether the audit analyzes the bond program’s performance in areas recommended by the association, such as timelines, budgets, change orders and forecasts.
