Data App: Even More Payroll

Today we're launching an update to our government payroll data app to include 14 school districts and five counties — an addition of 140,000 public employees earning $6 billion in payroll. 

The database now contains information on more than 480,000 employees from 47 government agencies, including the largest state agencies, counties, cities, universities, school districts and mass-transit operators. The public now can search and explore more than $21 billion in public payroll, a significant portion of government spending that was compiled with information obtained under the Texas Public Information Act. 

The app now has the following districts: Northside ISD, North East ISD, El Paso ISD, Aldine ISD, Arlington ISD, Katy ISD, San Antonio ISD, Pasadena ISD, Fort Bend ISD, Lewisville ISD, Garland ISD, Round Rock ISD, Plano ISD, Highland Park ISD. 

And it includes these counties: Harris, Dallas, Travis, Bexar and Tarrant.

The app's landing page shows the top 25 highest-paid employees, top 10 agencies and top 10 jobs by number of employees. The app also allows users to search by names, agencies, or job titles, and then explore the results. To find a specific person, type all or a portion of the name in the "search salaries" field. Clicking an agency's name returns a summary page that shows the highest, lowest and median salaries — and the top 30 highest paid employees — in the agency. The summary page gives readers a general idea of how payroll is distributed with the visual aid of the Google Chart API.

A "search salaries" form in the data app also performs an inter-agency search. Searching for "teacher," for example, returns a statewide summary of more than 22,000 teachers. The bar graphs show that teachers' salaries most often fall somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000:

An inter-agency search by title can also be done by typing a title into the search form. A search for "superintendent" will show that the salary for Michael Hinojosa of Dallas ISD — $328,237 — is the largest among superintendents in our database, followed by Richard Middleton of North East ISD in San Antonio.

We must note that the database is far from perfect. The heads of school districts are commonly known as superintendents, but each entity uses its own set of terms. A search for "teacher" will not find those who are listed as "Elementary Bilingual 3rd Grade" or simply "Biology." As we obtained information, in some instances we clarified that we were only seeking full and part-time employees. As it turned out, some entities sent us a list that included a number of temporary election workers. In other instances, government entities only provided monthly rate for full-time workers or hourly rate for part-time workers. We dealt with each situation carefully, but the database still contains some ambiguous data.

Please enjoy exploring the app on your own — and let us know if you have corrections, tips or comments.