RECEIPTSAdd your district

About

Who's behind Receipts

01

Bio

Ethan Bell is a high school senior from Yorba Linda, California, and the founder of Receipts.

In summer 2026, Ethan completed a four-week, 120-plus-hour internship with the Huntington Beach City School District, working with the Chief Business Official and the Technology Services department. Along the way he attended several board meetings, and he saw how hard it can be for families and the community to find out how school budget decisions turn out after the vote.

Already drawn to business and finance, he wanted to follow the money all the way from the board's vote to the year-end reports. He started Receipts to make those results easy to find, and to support the district by showing what's working.

As the sole founder, he runs Receipts day to day: choosing which decisions to track, reviewing each record against the district's own documents, and applying the published stamp rules the same way every time.

By the numbers

  • 95board meetings checked
  • 47public documents read and linked
  • 82citations to an exact page
  • 18goals quoted word for word
  • 13decisions followed
  • Read the project overview
Read his story

02

In his words

Why I built this

During my summer 2026 internship, I noticed that it’s often hard to find out how school plans turned out, from board proposals to plans by admin and clubs.

I wanted to learn why board decisions were made and how they worked out, but that information was hard to find in one place.

I enjoyed learning about school budgets that summer, and that’s why I started here.

Who it’s for

People who go to board meetings, board members, and the people who work on proposals. I hope it helps them look back at what has worked and what hasn’t.

Here to help

I want to help the district. Receipts is meant to support the people who make these decisions by showing what’s working, and it only works if it stays fair and respectful.

What I’ve learned

  • Budget reports are hard to read. The hardest part was figuring out the deadlines and when things are due.
  • Some decisions don’t fit under a single stamp.
  • Districts can only do so much. Reserves, federal funding, and restricted funds limit what they can spend, which is why budgets are so often debated.

Where it’s going

Receipts starts with one district, but I want to expand it to other school districts.

What a stamp can’t tell you

A stamp doesn’t tell the whole story. Please don’t draw big conclusions about a decision from a stamp alone.

If the district shows that a stamp is wrong, I fix it and note the change. How we stamp explains the full process.

— Ethan Bell

03

Independence

Receipts is Ethan's own independent project. It isn't a district project, and the district doesn't approve what's published. Districts do have a say: they're invited to review every result, share their perspective on the page in their own words, and point out any document that should change a stamp. Every record is built only from public documents that anyone can open. AI tools assist with cross-checking those documents, and a person reviews every record and stamp before it's published.

04

Disclosures

  • Internship: in summer 2026, Ethan completed a four-week, 120-plus-hour internship with the Huntington Beach City School District, working with the Chief Business Official and the Technology Services department. Receipts is separate from that internship: it uses only public documents, and nothing learned during the internship.
  • Family: Ethan's father is a senior administrator in the district's Technology Services department.
  • Sources: every record uses only public documents that anyone can open, and links to each one.
  • Affiliation: Receipts is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Huntington Beach City School District.
  • Recusal rule: Decisions involving a department where a member of Ethan's family works get a second, independent reviewer, and the decision page says so. Their result stays unpublished until that review is done, and any follow-up with the district on them comes from the reviewer, not Ethan.

05

More school districts.

Receipts starts with the Huntington Beach City School District. Ethan wants to bring it to other school districts next, so more communities can easily see how school decisions turn out.

Want Receipts for your district? See how it works

06

Get in touch

CONTACT


For school districts

Want Receipts for your district, or have a question about a record? Reach out anytime.

Send a messageQuestions, concerns, corrections, or business opportunities. It goes straight to Ethan's inbox.Open the contact form

Keep going

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