Talk Business & Politics editorial: Transparency about a ‘Transparency Dashboard’

Let us be among the first to publicly applaud the Fort Smith Public School District’s new effort to provide more district information through a “Transparency Dashboard” that can be found on the school’s website.

The new page provides monthly financial summaries and other budget information, student grades and other performance measures, recent board actions, details about the district’s ongoing “rightsizing” actions, and other information. It provides district information in one convenient place.

“The website is updated regularly to ensure stakeholders have the most recent information available about the district’s progress and performance,” the district noted.

But let’s please not call it transparency.

Comedian Chris Rock has a routine about folks who want credit for stuff they are supposed to do. When someone says, “I take care of my kids,” Rock responds comedically by noting that “you’re supposed to” take care of your kids; you don’t get extra credit for that.

This “transparency” thing by the district is that. Except it’s not funny.

Beginning with the arrival of District Superintendent Doug Brubaker in January 2017, the district has moved away from real transparency like the football Hogs move away from a halftime lead. Brubaker’s hide-the-ball games continued under Superintendent Terry Morawski and his deputy, Martin Mahan, who is now the district superintendent.

Consider the school district as if it’s a house for sale. The information provided by the district’s new dashboard is the basic info one would expect from a Realtor listing. What the buyer – the public – needs to make an informed, prudent decision are details – real transparency – found by a survey, title search, and home inspection.

But this district doesn’t like close inspection.

The district hides behind technicalities to avoid being honest about the sudden and controversial decision to reassign former Northside High School football coach Felix Curry.

The district made it difficult to know about candidates during the superintendent search prior to the hiring of Mahan. The district also declined to make the finalists open to public meetings.

The district declined to explain how hundreds of personnel files, which included important personal and financial info, were found in unsecured, open dumpsters.

The district has yet to fully explain why it has taken more than a year to hire an in-house attorney after receiving numerous applications in October 2024. District officials have so far said they do not have a “timetable” to do so. The delay is curious considering that when the new position was approved in July 2024, the district noted, “This move is expected to help create a safer, more legally sound, and more efficient school district.”

The district continues to hide behind “pre-litigation” talks to avoid being honest about the cause of expensive design and construction problems with the Peak Innovation Center. The district’s actions resulted in two professional service firms sending notice that they were no longer interested in doing business with the district.

The district declined to explain why in 2023 it used private sessions with school board members to develop and seek approval of a significantly different teacher pay plan.

The district refused to honestly disclose how much of the more than $120 million in millage-supported construction was spent with local firms. The district also never explained why third-party managers overseeing the more than $120 million in millage construction used rules that made it difficult for local firms, especially architect and design firms, to bid for substantial projects.

Transparency is much more than presenting publicly-available data on a website. Transparency is a culture marked by instinctive turns toward accountability and not knee-jerk actions to obfuscate, ignore, and delay. Real transparency is an awareness that the public’s business should be public, even when the questions or the situations are uncomfortable. Especially when they are uncomfortable.

Among the definitions of transparency, our favorite is, “the quality of being open to public scrutiny.”

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