How we stamp

Last updated October 17, 2026. What changed

Our approach

Receipts aims to be fair to the district and faithful to the record. Board members and staff make hard decisions with limited budgets, and many of those decisions come with clear goals. Receipts follows up on those goals so families, staff, and board members can easily see what worked, what's still in progress, and where more information would help.

• Fair: every record uses the district's own words and documents.
• Respectful: results describe what the documents show, never anyone's character or intentions.
• Collaborative: the district is invited to review every result and share its perspective, and its response is added to the page.
• Correctable: if something is wrong, it gets fixed and the fix is noted.

What we track (and what we don't)

Receipts follows money decisions made by the Huntington Beach City School District Board of Trustees, starting with the 2021-22 school year, the earliest year in the district's online board records. Every agenda is read, and an item becomes a Receipt only when it meets both rules:

1. It's a money decision: it changes spending, savings, staffing costs, reserves, or how a fund is used.
2. The district stated a specific, checkable goal about the future, such as an amount of money saved, a completion date, or a reserve level to keep.

So far, 95 board meetings have been checked this way, and 13 decisions met both rules. Each meeting on the Board meetings page shows whether it produced a record. Items are chosen by these rules, not by whether the result is likely to look good or bad.

Each decision moves through three stages:

1. Brief (before the vote): what is being decided, the options, who is affected, the stated cost or savings, and how to comment.
2. Receipt (at the vote): each goal, quoted word for word with a link to the source, and its review date.
3. Stamp (at the review date): how it turned out, based on public documents, with a short explanation and sources.

Every stamp uses an icon and a word as well as a color, so it can be read without color.

• Goal met

  Public documents show the goal was met.

• Partly met

  Public documents show part of the goal was met, or a result smaller than first estimated.

• Not met

  Public documents show the goal was not met. Plans change for many good reasons, and this is not a judgment of anyone’s work.

• Too early

  The review date has arrived, but the reports needed to check it aren’t out yet.

• Not enough data

  The public reports available don’t yet include the details needed to check this goal.

Before a stamp, a decision shows one of these instead:

• Upcoming vote: The board hasn’t voted yet.
• Not yet due: Voted on. The review date hasn’t arrived yet, so there’s no stamp.
• In review: The review date has passed and the stamp is being checked.

A decision with several goals gets one stamp. The written explanation covers each goal separately, so a stamp of "Partly met" always says which part was met.

A stamp describes what the documents show. It is never a judgment of anyone's intentions or effort. Budgets change for many good reasons, like new state funding rules, enrollment changes, or new needs, and "Not met" means only that the expected result doesn't appear in the public record. "Not enough data" usually just means the standard reports don't break out that level of detail.

Only public documents published by the district or the State of California, including:

• Board agendas, staff reports, and approved minutes
• The Adopted Budget, First Interim and Second Interim reports, and Unaudited Actuals
• State education finance data, such as Ed-Data.org
• Written responses from the district

Every number and quote on the site links to the document it came from, with a page number whenever possible. If information is missing, the site says so instead of estimating. Receipts never fills a gap with a guess.

If the district names a date ("staff will report back by June 2025"), that date is the due date, and the quote is shown with its source.

If the district doesn't name a date, Receipts uses a default rule: the receipt comes due when the district publishes its Unaudited Actuals for the first full school year the change was in effect. California districts approve these by September 15 each year. They are the first public report of what was actually spent, so they're the earliest point a money goal can fairly be checked.

Each decision page labels which kind of due date it uses.

Before a new stamp is published, the district gets 10 business days to review the record and point to any document that was missed. Its perspective is added to the page in its own words. This applies to stamps published since October 7, 2026. For stamps published before then, the district is invited to review them after publishing.

Every decision page has a District response box that shows exactly where things stand: the district's response, "Invited, no response yet" with the date, or "Not yet invited."

If the district disagrees with a stamp: when the district points to a document showing the stamp is wrong, the stamp is corrected and the change is noted publicly on the decision page. When the district disagrees but there is no new document, the stamp stays and the district's response is shown beside it, in its own words. The evidence decides the stamp, and the district always gets to be heard.

How a stamp is decided

Stamps are never generated automatically, and they never rest on anyone's opinion. Every stamp goes through the same steps before it's published:

1. Every quote and number is checked word for word against the original district document, and the page is linked.
2. The written rules on this page decide the stamp. If the documents don't clearly show a result, the stamp is "Not enough data," never a guess.
3. A person reviews the evidence and confirms the stamp. Until then, the decision reads "In review."
4. Conflicts get a second reviewer. 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.
5. The district gets 10 business days to review it and point to any document that was missed (for stamps published since October 7, 2026).

Once a stamp is published, the district's perspective is always welcome, and any response is added to the page. Stamps published before October 7, 2026 get the same invitation after publishing. Each decision page shows whether the district has been invited yet.

AI tools assist with searching the district's public documents and cross-checking quotes and numbers against the originals. A person reviews every record and every stamp before it's published.

You don't have to take anyone's word for a stamp: every source is one click away, and all of the data can be downloaded.

When the answer is "Not enough data"

"Not enough data" isn't a dead end. Each of those pages has a What would settle this box naming the one public record that would show the result, and where it would usually appear. District staff can send the record, and community members can ask for it with a ready-made draft. Every open gap is listed on Data gaps, grouped by the kind of report that would close it.

A gap moves through four steps: open, requested, record provided, and resolved. When a gap is resolved, the stamp is updated using the new record, and the decision's timeline shows a dated note explaining what changed.

Open data

Every public record is free to download and reuse, as a spreadsheet (CSV) or as JSON with every quote, source link, and stamp explanation. The files are rebuilt with the site, so they always match what you see here. If you use them, please link back to the decision pages so readers can see the sources.

Corrections

Anyone, including district staff, can send a correction or tip. Every submission is read. When a record is wrong, it's fixed, the page's "last updated" date changes, and significant corrections are noted on the decision page. Nothing a reader submits is posted automatically.

Changes to this method

When the method changes, it's listed here with the date, so anyone can see what rules applied when.

• October 17, 2026: results on records under the recusal rule stay unpublished until the second, independent review is done, and follow-up on them comes from the reviewer. The scoreboard now separates results that could be checked from those that can't be checked from public reports yet.
• October 7, 2026: new stamps are shared with the district 10 business days before they're published. Added the recusal rule for decisions involving a department where a member of the founder's family works.
• October 6, 2026: added the written tracking rules, the "What would settle this" data gaps for "Not enough data" stamps, and a District response box on every decision page.
• October 5, 2026: first published, with the five stamps, the default review-date rule, and the corrections process.