Erika Bernabei, a former member of the Kingston City School District Board of Education, spoke during the public comment portion of the Oct. 7 meeting to ask for increased transparency and community engagement in decision making.

About a year ago, former George Washington Elementary School principal Wanda LoBianco mysteriously disappeared from work, and has since been replaced. The district has never revealed why LoBianco was absent, while some have alleged mistreatment of students and a toxic work environment.

“It's been a year plus or minus two days since I sat at GW as a school board member and listened to parents, teachers, social workers, other staff wanting more community voice, more communications, more transparency,” Bernabei said. “They weren't just asking for information that couldn't be shared because of legal restrictions. They were asking for culture change and behavior change from the board and administration.”

Bernabei said that since the initial meeting with the GW community, it took three months of her “badgering” for the board to eventually have a conversation, in which “the only thing we could agree on” was a community feedback survey sent that following July.

However, Bernabei said that other “robust ideas” to talk with the community never happened and the school board communications retreat originally planned for last winter never took place. Bernabei also asked, in light of the school board’s resolution to support immigrant students, that the community receives regular updates on “what the district is doing to fulfill its obligation to all kids.”

“The budget session at the end of last year at Miller was a perfect example of what happens when the board and admin does not have the infrastructure and the will to receive meaningful community voice, to incorporate it,” Bernabei said. “This doesn't go away. The budget is still tight. Hard decisions will have to be made again in the spring, and again you have an opportunity now to make sure it's not the way it was last year.”

During the old business portion of the meeting, Marc Rider, the board president, said that he has asked Karen Seery, the district clerk, to work on a contract “which was the next step that we needed to to get the consultant to first interview the new board members and then set up the the retreat.”