JANESVILLE, Wis. – Why is it smart for taxpayers to pay attention to their local school district’s travel expenditures?

Because school officials may not be doing such a good job of it themselves.

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EAGnews recently obtained a copy of the Janesville, Wisconsin school district’s credit card records for fiscal year 2014-15. The information came from the district itself.

Then a few weeks ago, EAGnews returned a portion of those records — having to do with travel and restaurant tabs — back to the district for explanation and comment.

A top district administrator responded with the following email message:

“Can you send me the source of this information and from whom it came from? None of the staff in finance can recall producing or sending such information.

“These numbers do not look familiar to me and seem, at first glance, to be very excessive.”

Later the same administrator sent another message saying, “The locations and amounts could very well be ours as there is a large amount of training and travel that goes on here.

“However, it’s the number of occasions and so on that seem unusual.”

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That was followed by another message a few days later.

“Yes, they did come from the district.”

When invited once again to explain the various expenses, the same administrator wrote, “To be able to send the detail to the responsible managers, get and process responses for all of the why’s, how’s and so on, would take until the end of next week.”

After waiting that amount of time, a final message came from the administrator, offering no details at all.

“The travel and related expenses are a mix of student paid travel, teacher and employee professional development, some of which are paid in part by Federal Title II dollars reserved for this purpose, by the conferences who are inviting staff from the SDJ to participate/present, from operating funds, etc.”

So all we can report for sure is that Janesville schools had 381 transactions at 91 hotels around the nation and world in 2014-15 for a total of $139.535.

The district spent at least $1,000 at 36 different hotels in 2014-15.

Here are some of the highlights from the travel ledger:

The school district had 17 different transactions at the Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, Florida between Aug. 29 and Nov.3, 2014, for a total of $5,157.

Two transactions at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego on April 12, 2015 totaled $2,205.

One transaction at the Hotel New Hiroden in Hiroshima, Japan came to $1,337.

Two transactions at the Hyatt Place Cincinnati totaled $6,476.

One transaction at the Intercontinental Hotel in Washington D.C. cost the district $4,091.

One transaction at the Napa River Inn in Napa, California rang up at $3,711.

Four transactions at the Revere Hotel in Boston came to $3,694.

Three transactions at the Rio Suites in Las Vegas totaled $1,680.

Then there were the bigger expenses closer to home.

One transaction at the Holiday Inn Milwaukee came to $2,722, and 86 separate transactions at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells came to $11,040.

But the biggest single travel transaction of the year was completed at the Hotel Harrington in Washington, D.C., which totaled a whopping $24,565.

Of course it costs a lot of money to get school employees (or perhaps students in some cases) to all these distant destinations.

The Janesville district recorded 362 transactions with various airlines in 2014-15 for a grand total of $106,570.

There were other travel-related costs as well – $8,650 for cabs and rental cars and $6,311 for online travel booking services like Travelocity, Orbitz and Expedia.

That brings the district’s total travel budget to $261,114

The district also reported its restaurant tab for 2014-15. It recorded 179 transactions at various eateries for a total of $20,194.

Some of the more popular venues for district personnel were Panera Bread, Papa John’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, Jimmy John’s and Little Caesars.

Most of the restaurant tabs came to two or three figures, while two came to four figures – the Bethesda Crab House ($1,181) and the Boat House ($1,262).

Who benefited from all of the above transactions, and what were their purpose?

You’ll have to check with Janesville school officials, because they are not telling us.