Elgin board votes to destroy closed audio recordings
The premiere of "Indiana Jones" has left me thinking a lot about buried treasure.
Not the "lost ark" or the "city of gold" this time. But a sort of holy grail for Elgin Area School District U-46 taxpayers.
Monday, board members voted to destroy all audio recordings of closed session meetings more than 18 months old.
The board's actions are periodic and perfectly legal. According to the Illinois Open Meetings Act, "verbatim records of closed meetings are not required to be reviewed and may be destroyed 18 months after the completion of the meeting recorded."
But their timing is also impeccable. June will be 18 months since former superintendent Connie Neale began negotiating an extensive contract deal, one that still riles taxpayers.
And June will also be time to approve a new contract for incoming superintendent Jose Torres.
Prior to destroying these tapes, information must be transferred to written format, the act states.
But the public never has to know what happens behind closed doors.
By law, board members must review closed-session meeting minutes every six months and then vote on whether to make some or all of those minutes public.
For years, U-46 board members have dutifully voted every six months to keep all closed-meeting minutes under wraps.
Board members past and present have acknowledged the votes were perfunctory and rarely, if ever, involved a thorough examination of the pros and cons of disclosure.
Still, in recent months, the board has made a move to sift through past meeting closed records, as far back as 1970, with the eye on eventually releasing some of that information.
The real juice -- the transportation and teachers union collective bargaining discussions, the pending racial bias lawsuit and personnel meetings are all discussed here.
The potential that some of that information could be handed to the public is exciting -- and a major step for the district. Still, in reality, it's unlikely that many of U-46's deepest, darkest secrets will ever come to light.
"The reality is, the vast majority of things we're not going to release anyway," board president Ken Kaczynski told me Wednesday.
Still, minutes involving old issues could be fascinating. They might also provide clues to those more hidden issues as well.
Like in Indiana Jones, you learn in U-46 that treasure is buried for a reason.
We just have to keep digging.
Five U-46 graduations Saturday
It'll be a long Saturday for interim Superintendent Mary Jayne Broncato. U-46 will host five consecutive graduations this Saturday at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates. Batting first is Streamwood High, with an 8 a.m. graduation, followed by Larkin at 2 p.m., Elgin at 11 q.m., South Elgin at 5 p.m. and Bartlett at 8 p.m. Congrats to all grads!