Communicating with the School Board

Providing timely and effective communication to families, staff, and community members is a high priority of the School Board and District Administration. The following guidelines have been developed to address issues, concerns, or suggestions.

Parent Concerns

The District has established, and consistently utilizes, a problem-solving process to address parent concerns. If you have an issue concerning your child's class or teacher, first contact the classroom teacher. From there, if the matter has not been satisfactorily resolved, you should contact the building principal. If the issue remains unresolved, or if you have a District-wide concern, please contact District-level administrators. The Superintendent’s office should be notified if this process has not been successfully resolved. Matters are generally referred to the Board only after these channels are exhausted; most matters do not have policy implications requiring Board action, and are typically resolved long before this final stage.

Addressing the Board

Residents may write to Board members in care of District 36 or via email. Click here to access email addresses for current Board members. Please note that there is no expectation of privacy for any communication (letter, email, etc.) sent to the Board individually or collectively. It is considered part of the public record and may be subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). If you send letters to several or all Board members, you may receive one response, most typically from the Board President.

Communications received via email or regular mail are incorporated into the Communications section of Regular Board Meetings Only communications received 10 business days in advance of regularly scheduled Board meetings can be included in the Board packet for the current month. Click here for a list of the Regular School Board meetings scheduled for the 2013-2014 school year.

Residents may address the Board during Public Comment of open meetings. The Board uses this time to listen to community questions and concerns, but will not respond immediately to individual requests and cannot take formal action on agenda items. Section 10-16 of the Illinois School Code states, “At each regular and special meeting which is open to the public, members of the public and employees of the district shall be afforded time, subject to reasonable constraints, to comment or to ask questions of the board.” District 36 not only complies with this law, but offers the public multiple times within its meetings to address the Board. However, in an effort to respect the time of the meeting participants, as well as ensure that all Board business can be attended to, the District has developed he following guidelines to facilitate Public Comment at its meetings.

Public Comment Guidelines

The Board provides two opportunities for public comment at its open meetings. The first public comment of any meeting will be primarily reserved for comments on current agenda items. The last public comment will be primarily reserved for non-agenda items. Sign-in sheets are provided at the information table. The Board President will call commenters to the podium. Each speaker is asked to provide his or her name and home address, which will be noted in the public record of the meeting. Each speaker is provided three minutes to speak. The speaker will be notified when the time limit is reached. If notified that the time limit has been reached, speakers are asked to promptly finish their thought and be seated.

Board Responses to Communications and Public Comment

Formal written or email responses will be provided within (60) days of the meeting date at which the communication was provided to the School Board. School Board. Please refer to Policy 2:140 – Communications To and From the Board – for further details on this topic.