Case study · Tooele County School District

Follow the money.

Understand how Tooele County School District collects, spends, and manages taxpayer dollars.

Independent, nonpartisan analysis of district finances, taxes, staffing, enrollment, debt, and educational outcomes.

Explore the Finances → Compare Districts

Independent and nonpartisan. An independent research and data project, not affiliated with the Utah State Board of Education, the Utah Office of the State Auditor, Utah school districts, or any other government agency.

Statewide

Tooele is the first case study. The data now covers all 41 Utah school districts.

The same standardized revenue, spending, budget, and reserve figures for every district, FY2012–FY2025 — so any district can be examined the way Tooele is here.

Utah overview → Find a district
The central question

Is the district using taxpayer resources efficiently?

We don’t assume the answer. We measure district spending against the things that should drive it, and publish the evidence so you can reach your own conclusion.

Enrollment

Has spending grown faster or slower than the number of students served?

Inflation

After adjusting for rising prices, how much has spending actually changed?

Peer districts

How does Tooele compare with Iron, Cache, and Box Elder on the same measures?

Outcomes

What results — graduation, achievement, growth — accompany the resources spent?

Lower spending is not automatically better, and higher spending is not automatically evidence of poor management. How we evaluate efficiency →

Spending

Where does the money go?

Every $100 the district spends, divided by what it pays for. Select a category to see its history and how it compares.

Compare

How does Tooele compare?

Spending per student in Tooele and three Utah peer districts. Each district keeps the same color on every chart.

All comparison metrics →
Featured investigation
In progress

Where has spending increased?

District expenditures have changed substantially over the past decade. We are examining the major spending categories, adjusting for inflation and enrollment, and comparing Tooele with Iron, Cache, and Box Elder.

Fiscal years
FY2016–FY2026
Primary sources
TCSD budgets and actuals; State Auditor spending data; audited financial statements
Status
Data collection
Updated
Follow this investigation →

What this analysis will answer

  1. Which categories grew the most?
  2. How large was the change, in real dollars?
  3. Did it outpace enrollment?
  4. How do peer districts compare?
  5. What do the records explain — and what don’t they?
Open questions

Questions worth asking

Where evidence is incomplete, we frame issues as questions, not conclusions. Each is tied to a dataset we are collecting.

Has administrative spending grown faster than enrollment over the past ten years, and if so, what changed?
How did past enrollment projections compare with actual enrollment, and how did they inform decisions to build new schools?
A district-commissioned purchase-card review noted that transaction data did not include a required business-purpose description for every purchase. What, if anything, has changed since?

See all research questions →

How we work

Every number has a source

Each published figure traces back to a government document, page, and table. Calculations are shown.

Methodology → Primary sources

Government records first

District budgets, State Auditor data, USBE reports, and audited statements rank above everything else.

Source registry → Open data

Check our work

Filter the datasets behind every chart and download them as CSV or JSON.

Data explorer →