DALLAS — New concerns have surfaced over travel policies at the Dallas Independent School District.

Administrators are already planning revisions based on a News 8 Investigates report into a recent conference trip to Toronto.

More than 160 DISD employees went on the week-long International Reading Conference trip to Toronto last May. The total cost to taxpayers—including the hiring of substitute teachers—exceeded $300,000.

Current district policy tightly governs expenses inside the United States. But News 8 has learned the DISD has no policies in place governing international travel.

Teachers could spend whatever they wanted on airfare, meals and lodging. Among the expenditures;

• $1,400 for airfare
• $400 a night for hotels
• A day trip for five teachers to Niagara Falls
• A four-course dinner at Sultan's Tent, home of the nightly belly dance

One of the teachers who went to Toronto retired one week later.

Harrell Budd Elementary School Principal Maya Lagbara and her husband spent more than $400 on dinner alone over two nights. Since three of her teachers were already going to the reading conference, we wanted to know why she decided to go along. “I felt like it was something that I needed as a growth development,” Lagbara said.

News 8 also asked why her husband, a high school journalism teacher, also went along. “Sir, you would need to ask him, but it was professional development," Lagbara said.

Mr. Lagbara did not return our calls for a response.

Neither did a teacher from Pinkston High School, who not only spent more than $2,000 in five days in Toronto, but—one month later—spent nearly $1,300 over four days at another reading conference at Disney World.

Just days later, she quit her teaching job with the DISD.

DISD parent and government watchdog Allen Gwinn, who devotes much of his spare time to tracking waste at Dallas public schools, said he is outraged.

"To do a conference in Toronto and then turn around then go to Florida? That's a vacation,” Gwinn said. “Do that with your own money—don't do that with the money that's meant to be spent on my kids."

One of Gwinn’s current peeves is posted on his Web site, dallas.org.

Over the past two years, DISD teachers and administrators have spent nearly $1 million in per diems without ever having to turn in a receipt or accounting for how the money was spent.

“You can go out, as people have, and buy alcohol; you can pay for in-room movies; you can buy tobacco products; you can spend it pretty much on anything—there would be nothing to stop you," Gwinn said.

DISD Finance Director David Rastellini admits the district was caught off guard with a rare conference trip beyond U.S. borders. “We feel like we need to go back and review and look at our reimbursement policies as it relates to not only foreign travel, but all travel,” he said.

E-mail bshipp@wfaa.com