IS THIS A WAY FOR SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO AVOID DISCLOSING OUT-OF-STATE TRAVEL?
Dearest reader, someone dropped an interesting breadcrumb into my inbox.
The breadcrumb was this:
Take a look at the District Administration Leadership Institute / DALI.
More specifically, look at how its memberships and Superintendent Summits work. So, naturally, I did.
And then I went looking for Michigan school districts paying for it. I didn't have to travel very far.
📍 HEMLOCK PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT
Hemlock's July 2024 check register shows:
ARC NETWORK, LLC
$4,200
"ANNUAL DA MEMBERSHIP"
Go back a little further and there's another one.
September 2022:
ARC NETWORK, LLC
$3,500
"MEMBERSHIP DUES"
So what exactly does a District Administration/DALI membership provide? That's where the breadcrumb gets interesting.
DALI is a professional membership organization for superintendents and other district leaders. Membership can include access to its Superintendent Summits. And according to DALI's own materials, qualified superintendents attending those Summits can receive:
🏨 Lodging underwritten by DALI
🍽� Summit meals and receptions
✈️ A travel reimbursement allocation
Members can attend eligible Summits as part of their membership without paying a separate Summit registration fee.
And these aren't all happening down the road.
DALI's event calendar includes destinations such as Park City, Utah; Pasadena, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Memphis, Tennessee; and Naples, Florida.
Think about how that works from the taxpayer's side.
The school district pays for a membership.
That membership gives the superintendent access to a Summit.
But instead of the district necessarily paying separately for conference registration, hotel, meals and all of the travel, DALI can underwrite or reimburse much of those costs.
What might appear in the district's check register?
"ANNUAL DA MEMBERSHIP."
That's when I started looking for other Michigan districts.
📍 PORT HURON AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT
Its 2019-20 association-dues disclosure actually spells this one out:
"District Administration Leadership Institute - Membership dues"
$4,887.50.
📍 ORCHARD VIEW SCHOOLS
Its January 2025 board records include an approved district membership in:
"DA (District Administration)."
And this one gives us another piece of the puzzle.
Just two months earlier, Orchard View's November 2024 board minutes said two administrators would be attending a DALI conference in December.
Membership.
And documented DALI travel.
Then there's another layer to how this organization works.
DALI also sells partnerships to companies that want to do business with school districts.
Its own marketing promises those companies direct access to superintendents and cabinet leaders involved in evaluating and purchasing products and services.
DALI describes the attendees as verified district decision-makers.
And its description of the partner model caught my spectacles:
"Not a conference. A conversion model."
So let's put all of this on the ledger.
A public school district pays for a membership.
That membership can provide access to destination Superintendent Summits.
DALI can underwrite lodging, meals and some travel expenses for qualified attendees.
Meanwhile, education companies pay DALI for structured access to the district decision-makers attending those events.
And that brings me right back to the breadcrumb - and the question.
Michigan requires school districts to publicly disclose association dues.
It also requires disclosure of certain administrator out-of-state travel costs fully or partially paid by the district.
So...
🐇 What happens when the district pays for the membership, but the organization receiving that membership money pays or reimburses much of the actual cost of the out-of-state trip?
Does that trip appear on the district's out-of-state travel disclosure?
Does it have to?
Could a taxpayer look at a district's required travel disclosure, see little or nothing associated with a particular trip, while the superintendent still traveled out of state through benefits connected to a taxpayer-funded membership?
And ultimately:
Is this simply an unusual professional-development model?
Or does it create a way for out-of-state administrator travel to occur largely outside the very disclosure designed to let taxpayers see it?
I don't have to answer that question.
The receipts are enough to ask it.
And to the reader who dropped this particular breadcrumb into my inbox...
You certainly know how to pick a rabbit hole.
With receipts and respect.
🐇 Lady Budgetdown
#LadyBudgetdown #FollowTheReceipts #MichiganSchools #SchoolSpending #PublicMoney #Transparency #DALI #DistrictAdministration