MILWAUKEE - When the Milwaukee Public Schools Board of Directors tried to pass a 16 percent tax hike the other week, taxpayer went nuts. In these tight times, you'd think the district would do everything it could to keep costs down. We found a great place to start. While signing up to work at Milwaukee Public Schools is a good way to help kids go places, the I-Team found it's also not a bad way to go places yourself. "Where does an employee of MPS need to go?" asked taxpayer Laura Donnelly. The better question: Where don't they go? "It doesn't come out of their pocket, so what do they care," said taxpayer Jeff Guse. You will. What the I-Team found in MPS travel records will blow you away. "You can't keep doing this to us," warned one weary taxpayer last week. She was one of hundreds of ticked off Milwaukee taxpayers who showed up at MPS headquarters to protest a planned 16% property tax hike. Board members told the capacity crowd they had no other choice, but to most, it just didn't seem fair. Months before any of this, the I-Team had already started looking at how the district spends its money. First, we dug through the last four years of travel expenses for MPS employees, administrators, and board members. "We do not condone junkets," said Board President Peter Blewett. "We don't condone travel as a reward or travel for the sake of travel." Maybe not, but they sure do a lot of it. Blewett admits even he didn't realize how much. "This is the first time I've seen the aggregate numbers," Blewett said after the I-Team showed him our research. Over the last four school years, the folks on the MPS payroll, from the superintendent to the secretaries, took nearly 10,000 trips mostly to out of state conventions, conferences and workshops all over the country. We found some school which sent ten or more people to the same event. All totaled, MPS racked up nearly $6 million in expenses on the road in just four years. "That's a lot of money," exclaimed District PTA President Roxanne Sparks. "That's a lot of books. That's a lot of teachers who we've lost because of budget cuts. The music, the gym, the languages, the art. We could be using that." Grants covered some of the tab, but grant money is still mostly public money. You'd think the buck would stop with the superintendent, and we figured what better place to speak to him about what the district spends on travel than Savannah, Georgia. Why Savannah? In October, Superintendent William Andrekopoulos, and four other MPS employees, made the trip for the two-day National Association of Charter School Authorizers Annual Conference. Andrekopoulos sits on the board. On day one, after breakfast, browsing the vendors' booths, and a board meeting, Andrekopoulos headed for the airport. We questioned Andrekopoulos about those 10-thousand trips before he climbed into a cab. I-Team: "Do you ever get reports from these schools as to what was done, why they send so many people, spending tens of thousands of dollars in some cases?" Andrekopoulos: "That pretty much is a school based decision. Based on that, occasionally we'll get some reports on it, but most of it is really a school-based decision." Expensive decisions without whole lot of oversight. I-Team: "Should the principals be allowed to spend that kind of money on travel?" Andrekopoulos: "I think that's an area that we have to constantly look at. We have district policies and procedures and we hold people accountable to those policies and procedures." But clearly, we got him thinking about those policies on the way home. Andrekopoulos made sweeping changes--effective now. Principals only get one out-of-state trip a year. Assistant principals get one every other year. Only 5 percent of teachers can attend out-of-state conferences each year. No more than one trip a year for support staff. Plus, the superintendent now gets copies of all travel requests. It's a big deal for the district, and for parents whose taxes still went up this year. "If you're going to spend my tax dollars, I want to see results," said taxpayer Valerie Jamison Jamison says MPS owes it to her and to every other taxpayer whether it spends one dollar or one million dollars on travel. Obviously, traveling for professional development can be valuable, but after our investigation, the superintendent is looking at other options like online, video, and distance learning. Ultimately, these new policies will save taxpayers a lot of money. If you have concerns about the way with the way board members or administrators use your tax dollars, let them know. You'll find their contact information by clicking the link below.