In a world of rising prices and with a school district with a still-to-be-balanced $80 million budget, Lori Kohl doesn't mind being a budget watchdog for Hempfield Area.

She has questioned administrators and school board members about how, and why, they are spending taxpayer dollars and teachers' time on projects she believes are unrelated to education. Ms. Kohl isn't satisfied with the answers.

How much money, she asked at a recent school board meeting, did the district spend on a March 28 rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama?

And how much is the district spending on lights, heat, water, sewage and janitorial time for members of the high school marching band to use the high school kitchen and cafeteria to make hoagies for fund-raisers so they can travel to California this year and Hawaii next year?

To these and other questions, Mrs. Kohl said she has heard only "I don't know." To her, it is an unacceptable answer from people who are spending taxpayer money.

"How does the school board approve any type of fund-raiser or activity if they do not know the cost to taxpayers?" she said.

"Anybody can request anything and they're going to approve it without finding out the cost? I don't think they want taxpayers to know how much this is costing."

Ms. Kohl said she also is concerned about the timing of next year's band trip to Hawaii. Currently, students are expected to return the day before the district's Pennsylvania System of School Assessment testing begins.

Nearly 200 of the high school's 500 11th-graders tested below proficient in math in last year's assessments, while 114 tested below proficient in reading, according to state reports.

Assistant Superintendent Andrew Leopold, who fielded Ms. Kohl's questions at an April 21 school board meeting, said in a recent telephone interview that the rigor of the district's curriculum -- not the timing of the band trip -- would be the greatest influence on band members' state test scores.

He also said he thought Ms. Kohl's query about the cost of using school facilities to raise money to pay for the trip asked for an unreasonable level of detail.

"To be quite honest, it was quite a far-fetched question and really nothing to respond to," Mr. Leopold said.

Administrators ultimately did respond to questions about the district's spending, however. The Obama campaign, Mr. Leopold said, was billed $1,670 to cover the cost of additional custodial time the district needed to help set up and clean up the event, and has reimbursed the district that amount of money.

As for the marching band's fund-raisers, district officials said the kitchen and cafeteria would be heated regardless of whether band members were using them, creating no additional cost.

The additional cost of lights, water and sewage cannot be determined because they are not metered separately in the kitchen and cafeteria, where students and parents work after school on some Fridays and early Saturdays to make the hoagies that fund the band's trips, according to district business manager Peggy Gillespie.

The additional cost of keeping a janitor in the building during the fund-raisers, however, can be calculated, she said. Janitors work an extra 12 hours for each of the bands 12 annual hoagie sales, at a cost of $178 in custodial time per sale, or $2,136 over the course of the school year.

But until Ms. Kohl began questioning the district, Ms. Gillespie said, no one had asked for a breakdown of such costs.

"There's been no direction from the school board that they wanted that information," she said.

The band's fund-raisers have paid for its nearly 200 members to march in special events around the country, including last year's Rose Bowl.

And while private groups such as the Obama campaign often rent the district's facilities for a fee, the district frequently lets others -- such as the Girl Scouts, Brownies and Cub Scouts -- use its facilities for free, said school board vice president Randy Stoner.

"I think all schools make their facilities available to nonprofit organizations, and the band is about as nonprofit as it gets," he said.

As for the timing of next spring's Hawaii trip, he said, parents concerned about the effect of next spring's trip on state test scores can simply tell their children they're not allowed to go. Different children handle stress differently, Mr. Stoner said.

"Would my kid be stressed after a 6,000-mile trip? Maybe," he said. "Some kids would be more acclimated to that time change and the jet lag.

"I know I would be tired. I'm old, though."