LUBBOCK, Texas – The Lubbock Independent School District has its own travel department.

If that’s not a red flag for taxpayers, it certainly should be. When a government department of any type exists, you can be sure that a lot of tax dollars are spent.

When it came to employee and student travel in the Lubbock school district, that certainly appears to be the case.

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In fiscal 2016-17, the Lubbock district spent more than $1 million at hotels alone.

The exact total was $1,028,067.49, according to our tally, through 2,373 district travel card transactions. That comes out to an average of about $433 per hotel transaction.

We came to those figures through a review of 521 pages of travel card expense records provided by the school district through a public information request.

The school district also spent $395,321.76 on airline fares and fees through 1,158 travel card transactions, according to our calculations. That averages out to about $341 per transaction.

That brings the district’s combined hotel and airline expenditure to a whopping $1,423,386.85 for a single year.

Perhaps those dollar figures are a little less surprising, considering the Lubbock district currently has 1,184 travel cards issued to employees. If you issue them, they will use them.

EAGnews.org has been reviewing travel spending documents from school districts throughout the nation – big and small – for several years now, and we’ve rarely come across one-year travel totals that large.

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A striking comparison can be made with the much larger Austin, Texas school district, which spent a combined $1.3 million on hotels, airlines, and restaurants in 2016-17.

The Lubbock district serves about 28,000 students. Austin serves about 83,000.

The number of hotel charges, and the amount of money spent on them was the biggest shocker on the Lubbock travel document.

We counted 150 hotel transactions that came to at least $1,000 each. Many were for multiple nights and were likely for multiple people.

The district spent a combined $13,146.72 in 10 transactions at the Churchill Hotel and DuPont Hotel in Washington, D.C. on July 20-21, 2016.

There was a single charge for $9,280.30 – for one night – at the Embassy Suites in Austin, Texas on May 31, 2017. There was a single charge for $5,990.64 at a Doubletree at an unlisted location on June 1, 2017.

There was a single charge for $7,979.60 at the Hilton in Anaheim, California on Jan. 13, 2017. There was a single charge for $4,072.50 at the Hyatt Place in Austin, Texas on Feb. 18, 2017.

There was a single charge for $5,000 at the La Quinta Inn on South Padre Island, Texas on April 8, 2017.

There were seven charges, for a whopping total of $30,181.01, at a Best Western and a Holiday Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas, April 7-10, 2017.

There were 20 charges of $215.82 apiece at the Hampton Inn in Burleson, Texas on Dec. 11, 2016. That totaled $4,316.40. There were 15 charges of $247.98 apiece at the Holiday Inn in Norman, Oklahoma on May 21, 2017, for a total of $3,791.90.

Nancy Sharp, a spokeswoman for the Lubbock district, said the travel expenses were for students and district employees. She said most of the trips were very long because Lubbock is located in a remote area of Texas.

She added that some expenses – like the big tabs at the Churchill and DuPont hotels in Washington, D.C. – were funded by federal grants. Of course, that’s taxpayer money too, just filtered through a different source.

Sharp said employees must provide receipts for transactions put on their travel cards, and any expenses they can’t substantiate are deducted from their paychecks.

Some student trips are subsidized by booster clubs, sponsors, and student fundraisers, although district credit cards are still used to make the payments, Sharp said.

She was not able to say what percentage of the travel costs were for employees or students, or what percentage of the student travel costs were subsidized.