May 13, 2014 4:43 PM

Fast-growth school leaders say Combs isn't telling the whole story on transparency

Combs says she's promoting accurate information for voters; School districts argue she is over-simplifying

School district leaders in some of the most rapidly growing parts of Texas say the efforts of outgoing Texas Comptroller Susan Combs to provide more transparency for voters at the local level have been incomplete at best and misleading at worst. That’s why they’ve begun to push back against what she has billed as the “Tell the Truth Texas” project – not because anyone has a problem with transparency but because many superintendents don’t think Combs is actually promoting that.

As you may know, Combs has said she’s working to provide greater accountability for school districts by giving voters as much information as possible about the debt loads local school districts have on their books. Her office has gone through an extensive process of gathering school construction costs through public information requests and then placing them on this website, where those costs are averaged.

The Comptroller’s website says putting all this information in one place has been no small task:

"Since no single publicly accessible database contains all Texas school construction data, the Comptroller sent a public information request in October 2013 to each school district and charter operator in the state. Our agency requested information for all newly built campuses that opened between Jan. 1, 2007 and October 2013. Because we wanted to measure only the facility costs of campuses built from the ground up, we asked responders to exclude land, road and parking costs and itemize them separately where possible."

In response, the Fast Growth School Coalition has now issued a report of its own called “Texas Schools Aren’t Average.” The report, which you can access here, stresses that “in Texas, decisions regarding public education are made by local communities, and since local communities are all different, that means decisions about educational programs and school buildings are going to vary considerably across the State of Texas.”

By Scott Braddock