The “budget” section of the Elizabethtown Area SD (Lancaster County) website puts this district on my Transparency Honor Roll. The May 2008 presentation of the proposed budget is one of the best, if not the best, that I’ve seen. (That’s after looking at about 150 websites so far toward my end-of-year goal of looking at fiscal data — or the lack thereof — at the websites of all 501 Pennsylvania school districts.)

If you don’t have a high-speed Internet connection, get a cup of coffee while this 9.5 MB file downloads. But there’s no fluff here. In addition to more basic information, you’ll find trend data from the mid-1990s to the present; salaries and benefits (high/average/low) for teachers, administrators and support staff, broken out separately; and per-pupil spending comparisons with neighboring districts. Data on academic achievement appears elsewhere on the site.