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Schools

Howard County Public Schools System Receives Sunny Award

HCPSS was honored with an award for transparency.

The Howard County Public Schools System recently received an award for its website’s transparency.

The Sunshine Review, a non-profit entity that gathers and distributes informations on local governments, gave a yearly Sunny Award to the HCPSS. Howard County’s school system was one of two Maryland school systems to receive a Sunny Award for its website, the other being the Anne Arundel County Public Schools System.

“The Sunny Awards recognize governments that make transparency a priority,” said Sunshine Review President Michael Barnhart in a release. “The winners of the Sunny Awards are cities, counties and school districts that proactively share the public information that empowers citizens and keeps government accountable to the people.”

The Sunshine Review analyzed more than 1,000 qualifying government websites and ultimately gave 247 of them a Sunny Award. The criteria for a Sunny Award requires recording an A grade on a ten-point checklist.

Included in the list are the following requirements of information: budget, meetings, elected officials, administrative officials, permits and zoning, audits, contracts, lobbying, public records and local taxes. According to the Sunshine Review’s website, HCPSS received an A-minus grade for meeting the criteria in nine of the ten checkpoints.

HCPSS received an incomplete grade for its elected officials information on its website, due to it not offering individualized email addresses for each official listed.

The Sunshine Review launched in 2008 and was originally a project of the Sam Adams Alliance. In 2010, the Sunshine Review relaunched independently with a focus on evaluating how transparent government websites were to the public. The Sunshine Review’s website is a wiki-format, allowing users to edit information posted about their local government’s site.

Related:

- It’s Sunshine Week: How Open is Howard County Government?

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