# What you can ask this archive **Generated by `scripts/build_question_bank.py`. Do not edit.** 107 questions this archive can answer, in plain English. Every one has been run against the data, so nothing on this list is a question we merely hope is answerable. Some carry a second line in italics. That line says what the answer does **not** tell you, and it is usually the more important half: a figure quoted without it is the kind that cannot be defended when somebody asks where it came from. The same list with the query behind each question is at [questions.md](https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/analyses/questions.md), and anyone can run those against the data at [https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/api/query](https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/api/query). --- ## The school budget - What did the district budget in total, in each year and at each stage? *A STAGE is not a period. proposed, settled and actual are three different documents about the same year, and they must never be mixed.* - Which budget lines grew fastest across the years the archive holds? *Both ends are the SAME stage. A rate measured from an actual to a budget is partly growth and partly the step between them.* - Which lines do two documents state differently, and by how much? *The documents disagree with themselves by up to 1.5%, which is larger than most variances anybody wants to measure.* - What does each FY27 scenario total? - How many budget lines are there in each section of the budget? - Which function groups hold the most budget lines? - What is in the FY27 workbook, by column? *Filter row_kind='line': the sheet's own TOTAL rows are loaded too, and summing without the filter double-counts roughly fourfold.* - Which budget lines appear in the workbook but not in the line catalogue? - How many figures rest on a document that two sources report differently? - What is the total salary line in each year, and does the stage change it? - And total expenses? - What is the biggest single line in the budget, in each year? - How many lines does each budget document state? - Which lines exist in one scenario but not another? - What does the FY27 workbook say each line was in FY25? ## Special education - How many special education paraprofessionals were budgeted, by school and year? *This is the line the 12.8% escalator rests on, and it is dollars, not people.* - And special education teachers? - What has out-of-district tuition done, year by year? - How many children were placed outside the district, and where? *A count of children placed. It says nothing about which fund paid or what a placement cost, so it does not settle the money.* - Do the placement counts tie to their own parts, and to the prior year? - What has special education transportation cost, by year? - Does each year of the placement series agree with what the next report says of it? *Two checks travel with this series: the parts sum to the total, and each year states the previous year's figure. n/a is the first year, which has nothing before it.* ## The town's books - What did each department spend against its budget, in the latest period held? - Which departments are spending faster than the year is elapsing? - What funds does the town keep, and what restricts them? - What moved through the special revenue funds in each year? - How many accounts are there at each level of the chart? - Which grants did the district receive, and who owns them? - What does the ledger hold for each fiscal year and period? *Period 13 is the year-end close, after purchase orders are cleared. Period 12 is not the end of the year.* - Which function codes can be compared between the budget and the ledger? *This is the level at which the two systems join. Below it they do not: the town shortens account names to ten characters.* - How much did each function group budget and spend across all years? - What went through fund 1301, and when? - Which accounts had the largest unspent balance at the latest period? - How much was transferred into or out of each account? *transfers is CUMULATIVE. Movement between two periods is the difference of the column, never the later value.* - Which accounts are revenue rather than expenditure? *Revenue rows are stored NEGATIVE, exactly as MUNIS prints them. Check account_type before doing arithmetic across types.* - What share of its budget had each department used? ## Staff on the rosters - How many people of each kind did the town print on a roster, by year? *A count of names the town printed. It carries no FTE and no funding source, so it is not a staffing level.* - How many paraprofessionals, by school and year? - How many paraprofessionals were tied to a named grade? - What did the town print as the title for a paraprofessional, year by year? *Tutor, Aide, Tutors/Aides, Paraprofessional, Para, (para), Sped Para. Five names for one job across fifteen years, which is why role_category exists.* - Which roster titles could not be classified at all? *Left unknown rather than guessed. 8% of rows.* - Which rule decided each classification, and how much rests on the weakest ones? *A rule beginning heading- read the section heading rather than a printed title, which is weaker evidence.* - How many names appear on each school roster in each year? - How many teachers were printed against a specific grade? - Which schools have roster entries, and for which years? - How many counselors, nurses, psychologists and social workers, by year? - How many people did the town print on a roster in total, by year? - Which names appear across the most years? *A name printed in a public annual report. It is not a claim about employment, and a roster gives no FTE.* - How many administrators did each school print? - Which grades appear anywhere on the rosters? ## Athletics and fees - What did each sport cost, and how many played? - Do the per-sport figures add up to the totals the district printed? - What has athletics cost and raised, year by year? - What has the athletic fee been, by year and tier? - Which rates does this project know about, and which does it use? *It deliberately includes rates the model does NOT use, and the ones that cannot be stated at all.* - Which rates were set by a document we hold, and which were not? ## The annual town reports - What appropriations did each annual report print, and are the rows checked? *ALWAYS split on status. checked, check failed and no check are three different claims and nothing may be aggregated across them.* - What did the town pay in gross wages, and to how many people? - What debt has the town carried? - What capital projects did the reports list? - What is in the trust funds? - What did the town value its property at? - What enrollment and MCAS results were printed? - What did the town assess for Monty Tech? - How many births, deaths and marriages were recorded? - Who held town office, and when? - What did each department report doing? - What receipts did the town record, and from what source? - What tables does each annual report contain? - Which tables in the reports were read, and which are still uncaptured? - What did the survey find on each page of each report? - What is catalogued in each report, by printed heading? - Where did the extraction find something it could not reconcile? *An anomaly is a finding about our reading of the page as much as about the page.* - Which special revenue funds appear in the reports, and in which years? - How many figures did each annual report yield, and how many were checked? - Which report tables print a total we can reconcile to? - How many pages of each report carried figures at all? - What kinds of anomaly did the extraction find, and how often? ## Revenue, tax base and free cash - What free cash has each town certified, and from what? *Absolute dollars with no denominator, so they do not compare between towns of different size. The composition does compare, because a share has no size.* - How does Lunenburg free cash compare with its neighbours, by composition? - What has the town spent on capital, and where did the money come from? - What is in the FY27 capital plan, and what is funded? - How do state measures compare Lunenburg with other districts? - Which DESE measures reconcile against the printed totals, and which do not? - How has free cash moved for Lunenburg specifically? - Which towns does the free cash comparison cover? - What measures does the state publish about this district? ## Votes and elections - What has the town been asked to fund, and did it agree? - What turnout did each ballot question draw? - What election results did the annual reports print? ## Provenance, and what is not established - Where did a figure in this dataset come from? *This is the join that gives an annual-report row an address. Use it in any query whose answer somebody might want to check.* - Which documents does the archive hold, and how were they obtained? - Which documents no longer open at the publisher, or no longer match our copy? - Which documents have no upstream address at all? *A gap on our side, not the town's: they were gathered before the mirror existed and nobody wrote down where they came from.* - Where do two sources state the same budget line differently? - How much of each dataset has been checked against the page it came from? - Which figures has somebody stated publicly, and on what basis? - Which budget lines have no ledger account mapped to them? *The crosswalk is empty ON PURPOSE. District lines are named, MUNIS rows are coded, and no published document maps one to the other. Budget-to-actual at line level cannot be answered from this data.* - Which pages of the annual reports have columns we could not establish? *v1 is an ordinal -- the first column of THIS page that held figures -- not a column name. Read column_meaning before summing anything.* - How many rows of each report table failed their own check? - Which documents were obtained by records request rather than published? - What basis does each document have for the figures it prints? *ledger means a figure exists because a transaction did. restatement means a prior year re-presented by the party that spent it. They are not interchangeable.* - Which datasets have a document for every edition, and which do not? - How many rows of each dataset came off each page? ## Finding your way - What tables are there, and how big are they? - What fiscal years does the archive cover, per dataset? - What does one fiscal period mean?