★ Office of Superintendent of Predictable Income ★
STARS EXPLOITER
A tycoon game built on a real Washington State school-transit funding formula.
The formula pays you exponentially for how far your buses drive and how many separate schools they serve —
but only logarithmically for actual students. Your job: build the most absurd, unaccountable
school district the spreadsheet will reward. Maximize funding — worry about audits later.
Select your starting district
Pick a size — a district is dropped in at random from that bucket (by total allocation). Or choose a specific one from the dropdown below.
Formula reproduced from the OSPI STARS Funding Simulator (2025-26 coefficients):
Allocation = e^(8.6013 + 0.665·ln(basic+1) + 0.11·ln(special+1) + 0.0152·destinations + 0.0423·avgMiles + 0.0284·ln(landArea) − 0.2078·nonHighNoBus).
This is a satire. Real districts are capped by prior-year spending; this game ignores that cap so you can watch it break.
STARS Funding
$0
Starting Allocation
$0
vs Start (score)
×1.0
Avg Route (mi)
0
😠 Angry Parents
0
Schools: 0 · Avg route: 0 mi · Students: 0 · 😠 Angry parents: 0
Schools stay inside the district (dashed boundary). Longer routes just loop around more. Tip: click empty space to build a school. Drag schools outward to crank ride distance.
😠 Angry parents
At the school board right now0
Per district policy, an Assistant Superintendent must now drive a box of artisanal chocolates to each angry parent every single day to keep them from storming the board. Each delivery soothes one parent. The price is a slice of your funding — based on your starting allocation while you're underwater, otherwise a fraction of your current funding — and it rises with the size of the mob (though it tops out; a bigger crowd never makes a single box infinitely expensive). It's billed straight off your score. Stop deliveries and the anger comes right back the next time you bulldoze.
Selected school
No school selected. Click a school on the map (in Move mode), or build one.
Basic-program Riders
0
Each rider = round trip (×2 counts). Pays logarithmically — diminishing returns. A route only earns money if at least one rider is on it.
Special-Program riders (SpecEd, Gifted, Homeless, Bilingual, Early Ed)
0
Even weaker payoff (×0.11 log) — barely moves the needle. Mostly a trap.
Route distance
0 mi
The length of this school's bus route, in the funding exponent: +4.3% per mile — but only up to a believable ~40 mi one-way. Past that the route is "insane" and every extra mile penalizes your funding. Drag the school to reposition it.
District-wide
Schools (delivery destinations)
0
Each distinct school served is one destination in the formula — in the exponent at +1.5% each, compounding. Put a rider on each and stretch its route to make it pay. Click the map to place them too.
Declared land area (sq mi)
0
Logged (weak) funding boost, but unbounded. A physically bigger district also makes longer routes look reasonable, so growing land lowers how angry parents get about ride distance.
Bulk Updates · every school
Basic riders — scale across all schools
Special riders — scale across all schools
Route distance — scale across all schools
Percentages multiply each school's current value (+100% = double, −100% = zero). rnd applies a random change per school for some organic chaos.
Live STARS breakdown
Funding = $5,439 base multiplied by every term below