Letter to the Editor: BOE Needs More Transparency

To the Editor:

The members of the Board of Education are volunteers and dedicate many hours of their time to the service of this community.  They do this, however, by choice.  They are elected by the community to represent the interests of the community.  While the community surely owes them respect, the members of the Board owe the community honesty, integrity and transparency in return.

The decision to close schools in order to make up for a huge budget shortfall is a difficult one.  It appears that many members of the community joined in volunteering their time by participating in study groups to help attain the best solutions.  They all should be commended for their hard work and dedication.  Mr. Simon has been hard at work as well.

While the Board has been transparent in their efforts to share the results of the study group’s findings and welcomed the input of the community, the transparency appears to have ended there.  When it came time for the actual decision-making, the decision to go with the option of closing two elementary schools was announced at a planning session meeting with no prior announcement.  There was no slide show presentation explaining each member’s reasons why they thought this was the best option and how they arrived at that conclusion.  The same goes for the ultimate decision to close Westbrook and Kirdahy.

Based on the information that was presented to the public regarding the criteria that was supposed to govern the Board’s decisions, I do not understand how the Board reached the decisions that they did.  Based on the reaction of the community in general, I do not think I am alone.  It is very hard to make the connection between the information presented and the conclusions the Board has somehow drawn from that information and believe that a decision in the best interests of the community has been reached.

If the Board truly wants the trust and support of the community they represent, they owe this community a full and complete explanation of how and why their decisions have been made.  Without that explanation, the community is left to draw their own conclusions based on rumors and assumptions, which only serve to divide the community further. 

I believe it would be in the best interest of the community to be brought together instead by full transparency by the Board.  If the Board is in fact there to serve the best interests of the community, we should expect them to be addressing this community with their explanations sooner rather than later.

WI resident, Serena Leonard.