How long must I wait?

 At the October 13th school board, my emailed communication was read to the board. I wrote:

Members of the board,

I request a response from the District to my two questions.

To what extent is The 1619 Project being introduced, taught or discussed in any classrooms in the Richland 2 School District?

If it is not yet in the Richland 2 School District, will the School Board be consulted before it is taught?

I look forward to your response.

Today is November 21, 2020. I am guessing that I shall not be receiving a reply from the Richland 2 Board or the superintendent.

The Board may or may not be listening, when the question is asked. Their eyes may be open; their ears are in working order but may be tuned in elsewhere. And some of their minds? It's anyone's guess.

Here is why you will never receive an answer to any question asked of the board.

1. The Board does not discuss any comments or answer any questions at a board meeting.

2. The Board does not formally ask or direct the superintendent to respond to any comment or question from the audience.

3. The superintendent will not take it upon himself to answer any question or respond to a comment. He'll excuse his lack of response by saying that the board never told him to respond.

Where does this leave the member of the audience or of the public?

You can write directly to the superintendent; or

You can file a FOIA Request with the District. For information and the email address of the FOIA Officer, go to the District's website and search for "FOIA".

I recently did submit a FOIA Request to the FOIA Officer. My email was undeliverable. When I forwarded my returned email to R2 Public Affairs, I was informed that the FOIA Officer's name had changed. A few days later the name and email address were correctly shown on the District's website.

Then I suggested a better email address would be "FOIAOfficer@Richland2.org" 

Let's hope that the District preserved all of the emails sent to and from the previous email address. A better step would have been an auto-forwarding of the first email, with advice to the sender that the email address had changed.