PANAMA CITY, Florida – About a year ago, officials from the Bay County, Florida school district were upset about a proposed state budget that would have apparently cost the district about $300,000 in Title 1 funding, and possibly lead to some teacher layoffs.

“Please, contact Governor Scott and urge him to veto this budget,” Bay County teachers union President Alexis Underwood was quoted as saying by WJHG.com. “We can do better than this. They owe us better than this.”

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Local media jumped on the bandwagon by publishing alarming headlines like the one below:

“Bay District School leaders expect budget cuts and terminations soon.”

If Bay County school officials were really that concerned about losing $300,000 in state aid, they could have closely inspected their spending over the previous year and found ways to cut costs and save money.

After scrolling through the district’s fiscal 2016-17 credit card spending document, it doesn’t seem like it would have been difficult to come up with $300,000 in savings.

Let’s start with travel.

The Bay County district had 672 transactions at various hotels around the state and nation in 2016-17, for a startling total of $195,715.29.

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That included 83 charges for $23,723.63 at various Hilton hotels. There were 45 transactions totaling $16,192.56 at various Marriott hotels. There were 36 charges totaling $15,905.98 at the Tradewinds Island Resort. There were 44 transactions for $11,764.58 at various Hyatt hotels.

The school district also had 218 charges with Delta Airlines for a total of $28,877 and 15 transactions with Southwest Airlines for $12,497.15.

There were 695 transactions with Enterprise Rent-A-Car for $59,503.

The Bay County district had 4,086 transactions at Office Depot for a mammoth total of $391,681.34.

There was also a lot of shopping going on, particularly at Wal-Mart and its sister stores.

The district spent $53,836 in 464 charges at WM Supercenter, $46,654.03 in 490 charges at Wal-Mart, $22,253.60 at WalMart.com, and another $51,320.36 at Sam’s Club.

That all adds up to an amazing $174,063.99.

The school district also had 188 transactions with Xerox for $57,445, 371 transactions at Lowes for $33,591, 206 transactions at Office Max for $32,099, and 12 charges with Carnival Cruises for $31,172.04.

Then there’s the great unknown. The Bay County district had 3,162 transactions for a total of $374,900.31 with Amazon.com or Amazon marketplace payments, for who knows what.

Obviously Amazon.com is huge online clearinghouse for all sorts of products, and school district documents offer no clue about the type of items that were purchased.

The bottom line? They spend a ton of money at Bay County schools, on a lot of things that are probably less than absolutely necessary.

So if they feel a little bit shorted by the state in any given year, they should be able to find enough savings in their bloated budget to make ends meet.