Did you hear the one about the HISD teachers flying top-dollar?
These folks weren't even getting into first-class, bless their hearts. And don't you think if you're in the business of educating young people --- with problems like absent parents, guns, and rogue colleagues that even John Dewey couldn't have fixed --- you really deserve first-class treatment? (Full disclosure: Writer's mom is a retired public schoolteacher.)
But HISD staff just didn't seem to realize (or care) that a ticket booked days before a domestic flight can cost hundreds more than one booked a few weeks out. And the proclivity for pricey travel wasn't an isolated occurrence.
My colleagues Steve Miller and Lynn Walsh discovered these high-dollar purchases while looking at three years of HISD travel records. Their reporting also documented last-minute flights for conferences planned months in advance, $30 booking fees charged by an outside vendor that was not leveraging deep discounts, and toothless travel rules at the Houston Independent School District.
If you are a journalist-citizen or a citizen-journalist, we encourage you to delve into the travel records of your own local government. You may find something interesting, as we did.
To get you started, Texas Watchdog has produced a webinar, which you can see by clicking here, on the types of travel records that are available and the ways that official travel may be paid for. It's part of our TrentTV series for bloggers, citizen-journalists and journalists who want to put a magnifying glass on government.
And be sure to tune in to the next TrentTV episode, on digging into the federal stimulus, at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Contact Lee Ann O'Neal at 713-980-9777 or leeann@texaswatchdog.org.
Photo by Flickr user Shine 2010 - 2010 World Cup good news, used via a Creative Commons license.
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