A free, plain-English guide to all 1,310 Texas school districts — built entirely from the state's own official records, with a source on every number. No login, no spin, nothing to sell.
Made for the people the money belongs to — parents, taxpayers, teachers, reporters, and school board members — not the agencies that spend it.
What this is: a public record of what every Texas school district collects, spends, borrows and achieves — in plain English, from official state figures, with a source on every number.
Built with AI, in the open: a computer program helped build this site. Every number is checked against the State of Texas’s own files, thousands of times. It can still make mistakes, and we say that here, not in fine print. Can I trust these numbers? · How this was made, and the full terms →
Why it matters: your school taxes are the largest line on most Texas property bills. This shows what yours buys, and the finding that surprised us: spending $2,000 more per student changed results by 0.15 points — too small to tell apart from zero. What does move them is in here too.
Where this district materially differs from the districts most structurally like it (same size, growth, and funding profile) — each gap quantified in dollars per year and ranked by size. These are review targets and questions, not verdicts.
Operating spending by object — the kind of thing purchased, regardless of which department spent it. Schools are people-intensive, so payroll dominates almost everywhere; the interesting signal is how much goes to outside contracted services instead.
Program spending by student group. These overlap the categories above (a special-ed teacher's salary is both "payroll" and "special education") — this view answers "how much reaches each population," not a separate pot of money. Blank = the district reported none separately.
A flag is a question, not an accusation — growth spurts, bond programs, and one-time grants trip these checks for perfectly good reasons. Each card shows the actual numbers so you can judge.
Found by scanning the 17-year history of your structurally similar districts for sustained problems that later reversed. Worth a phone call — they solved a problem shaped like yours.
"How did our debt service change since 2020?" — an AI turns it into a database query against the same read-only data. Limited to 10 questions a minute.
This guide is meant to be quoted in board meetings, news stories, and policy work — so nothing is a black box. Here is exactly where the numbers come from and how they're calculated.
Every number, traced: the source register lists each government file this site is built from with a download link, and ties every published figure to the exact column it came from and the test that recomputes it from the state's own file. Machine-readable at /provenance.
Every figure originates in the Texas Education Agency's Summarized PEIMS Actual Financial Data — the state's official roll-up of each district's audited annual financial report, fiscal years 2009–2025. We load it unchanged; we do not estimate, model, or adjust any dollar figure.
Per student = the dollar total ÷ fall survey enrollment. Very small districts can show extreme per-student values — that's arithmetic, not scandal.
Total spending includes debt payments and construction. That is why it runs higher than the "current per-pupil spending" figure often quoted nationally, which counts day-to-day operating costs only. Both are shown here so you can use the right one.
Spending categories group TEA function codes: classroom instruction (11, 95, 12, 13), leadership & administration (21, 23, 41, 92), student support (31–33), transportation (34), food (35), extracurricular (36), facilities (51), safety & technology (52, 53), community services (61).
The 100-penny dollar splits total spending into whole cents by the largest-remainder method, so the squares always sum to exactly 100 — no penny is invented or lost. The "similar districts" and "all Texas" bars show the median share in each category across those districts, rescaled to a whole dollar (medians of separate categories do not add to $1 on their own). The dollars-at-stake figures do not use those rescaled shares — they use median dollars per student multiplied by this district's enrollment, so they are real money.
Peer districts are the most structurally similar districts statewide, matched on size, enrollment trajectory, and funding profile — deliberately not on spending, so that comparing spending stays meaningful.
Flags and peer gaps are automatic statistical checks (a >20% and >$100,000/year difference from the peer median). They identify questions worth asking — never wrongdoing.
• The data cannot isolate specific purchases such as HVAC systems or total technology spending; the state's summary reports don't break out that detail.
• Figures may differ from a district's own books because of timing and fund-reporting rules.
• Categories can overlap: a special-education teacher's salary counts as both "payroll" and "special education."
• Automated summaries and AI answers on this site can contain errors — verify before publishing.
Source: TEA's "Summarized PEIMS Actual Financial Data" — the state's official roll-up of district financial reports, fiscal 2009–2025, downloaded from tea.texas.gov.
Flags are math, not judgment. "Revenue drop" = revenue fell >15% vs the prior year. Districts get flagged for good reasons all the time — a bond ending, one-time federal funds expiring, a boundary change.
Per-student math: totals ÷ fall enrollment. Small districts can show extreme per-student values — that's arithmetic, not scandal.
Spending categories group TEA function codes: classroom instruction (functions 11, 95, 12, 13), leadership & administration (21, 23, 41, 92), student support (31–33), transportation (34), food (35), extracurricular (36), facilities (51), safety & technology (52, 53), community services (61).
Not: an audit, an official TEA product, a rating, or advice.