No Openness in RUSD

There has been much discussion about RUSD lately; the skeptics, in my opinion, have mistakenly placed their anger and mistrust towards the teachers and their recently ratified contracts and not where I believe it belongs – at the administrative level.

There are steps that our district’s leadership can take to restore the public’s trust, and I feel these steps are needed for our district to succeed. Our district has done an inadequate job in engaging the community of their needs and objectives.

Concerned citizens can go the twice-monthly board meetings, but the information discussed is contained in the “board packets” or informational handouts and are not typically shared with the audience members. It is difficult to follow the discussions when they refer to specific information not available to the audience. These board packets can be requested through an Open Records Request; they can also be viewed at the library, but possibly not for several weeks after the meeting in which the information was discussed.

The district needs to be proactive in engaging the public and post these board packets on its website, just as they post the agendas and minutes of previous board meetings. Other school districts such as Kenosha Unified are doing this successfully. They can further connect with the community by broadcasting their bi-monthly board meetings on the RUSD cable access channel.

Our community deserves better; a willingness to openly share information would go a long way in restoring faith in our school district.