Public school districts nationwide are enduring some lean economic times, and they're looking to cut costs wherever possible in order to stay afloat. Some have looked to travel expense management as one area where they can trim their budgets - many educators' schedules are jam-packed with business trips, and superintendents are working to shear those itineraries down to just the bare essentials.
One example of this trend comes from Simpson County, Mississippi, where the school board recently approved over $30,000 in travel expenses for a single month. One of the requests, for an extravagant trip to a conference in Las Vegas, asked for $5,000 paid out in advance, including $1,323 for a five-day stay at Caesar's Palace. The requests were ultimately approved by a 3-2 vote, but the preceding contentious debate was a healthy one, according to the Magee Journal.
"We don't rubber-stamp everything they ask for," board president Larry Cockrell told the paper. "We want to make sure it's necessary/"
This is hardly one isolated case. St. Paul, Minnesota also recently had a lengthy discussion of its school board's travel expenses, according to the Pioneer-Press.
In these situations, expense management software can be a tremendous aid to fiscal responsibility. School boards need to new use with taxpayers' money, and software solutions can help monitor every dollar spent.
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