Although considerable education research has focused on how K-12 school districts spend money, no extant literature has specifically examined how these districts invested in online endeavors, most notably website traffic cost. As the Internet and school district websites have become a crucial source of information for many educational stakeholders, it is important to investigate how school districts spend money to host and direct traffic to their website, which in turn may drive interest in a school district. As a result, this study analyzed the cost of generating traffic to 764 randomly selected K-12 school districts in Texas. Controlling for many school district characteristics, results suggest K-12 school districts levying higher local tax rates spend more money on generating traffic to their website (p < 0.05). Yet, many Texas Education Agency (TEA) regions were also predictive of the amount of money districts spend to generate traffic to their websites, indicating that both a school district’s location and its ability to raise tax rates or drive tax revenue may influence the amount of money that a school district spends on generating traffic to their website. Implications for school district choice, competition, and equity are addressed.Educatio
