The concerns voiced by educators statewide about reports showing how a school district’s funding is divided between its individual school buildings appear to be coming true.

This year, every school district has to file such a report to the state Division of the Budget to comply with federal reporting guidelines tied to Every School Shall Succeed Act. At the same time, some of the state’s bigger school districts are also preparing a similar report at the behest of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who included a provision in the state budget this year for a building-by-building funding for school districts within cities with a population of more than 125,000 people this year. The plan extends to more districts, including Jamestown, for 2019-20.

We’ll give the governor credit for one thing — the report provides transparency that heretofore did not exist. Having more information available to the public is never a bad thing.

It would be nice if the state’s efforts at transparency aren’t coming at too high a cost of valuable school district staff time. The reports required by the Division of the Budget and by Cuomo should be the same report; it is unclear right now if that will be the case.

As it is, school districts have undergone multiple iterations of the Division of the Budget report. Imagine the time needed to finish a report for one state agency only to do another report asking for different information for another state agency — and then having to go through different versions of the different reports. We can’t disagree when Bret Apthorpe, Jamestown Public Schools superintendent, told The Post-Journal’s Jordan Patterson that the reports could usurp “time and resources from really important work.”

Apthorpe also points out that the report is likely to be of more use to bigger school districts, particularly if districts have to do a report for the Division of Budget and then one for the governor as well. Reports for the “Big 5” school districts are likely to point out potential funding inequities than the same report for a small district like Jamestown or Dunkirk, which have nine and six school buildings, respectively, and which have the ability to have staff float between buildings more easily than the “Big 5” districts.

We applaud the state making more information available to the public about the way their schools are funded. The state should also make sure that transparency isn’t a waste of the public’s time and money through duplicative reports that require an inordinate amount of time.