A greater emphasis on school board oversight, two-way communications with the public and fiscal responsibility were the issues that highlighted a Riverside Brookfield High School District 208 board candidate forum Thursday.
The forum, hosted by the RB Music and Theatre Sponsors and held at Brookfield’s Hollywood Community House, included four of the five candidates vying for three seats in the April 1 election, including incumbents Ryan VenHorst of Riverside and Lorena Gasca of North Riverside.
Other candidates included Eric West and Patrick Williams, both of Brookfield, and Nicholas Caputo of Riverside. Caputo was unable to participate in person due to a prior commitment.
Perhaps the forum’s biggest surprise was when moderator Lisa Janunas noted she believed superintendent Dr. Kevin Skinkis’s contract would be up for renewal in 2026. Prior to posing a question about board oversight in contract negotiations, VenHorst noted that Skinkis’s contract had already been extended by five years.
According to the minutes of the regular meeting of the school board Feb. 11, Skinkis’s contract was extended from July 1 through June 30, 2030. Gasca moved for approval, seconded by fellow board member Carolyn Lach. The vote was unanimous.
Janunas pivoted to a related question: As a district leader, what is the top priority for the superintendent to meet in the coming years?
“I think the top priority for our superintendent is to continue representing our community,” said West, noting that tied into his rationale for running for the school board. “To just be somebody who is going to show up and do the will of the superintendent for the next half of a decade, is not at all what I have in mind to do.
“We need to have school board members who are going to listen to the community and who are going to go to the superintendent and say, ‘No, we maybe don’t like your idea,’ and stop being a rubber stamp.”
Two-way communication between the board and the community was another relatively hot-button issue. Janunas posed a question on how the board can gather information from the community.
“That’s something that’s really important to us as an organization, being heard and actually getting a response back from the high school, is something we find as a challenge,” she said, adding one of the 2024-25 school board goals was to increase two-way communication between the board and all district stakeholders.
Gasca said that while the district has hired community engagement coordinator Kiley Fletcher, who handles social media, surveys only go so far.
“I think we’re all over-surveyed,” Gasca said. “I think that creating a true dialog includes getting people to show up to the meetings and engaging with us and encouraging everyone to ask those tough questions and point out things we need to be looking at.
“I know people watch us on YouTube, because I get stopped all the time, and that’s good, but show up.”
VenHorst said the board gathers input from the community in multiple ways, including through emails, conversations with community members and “other intentional solicited ways” like surveys. In fact, Fletcher was hired based on survey results, he said.
Williams said that while he respects the decorum that’s been maintained at school board meetings, it also “feels like often the community is bringing something to the attention of the board and it just sort of sits there and doesn’t necessarily even get addressed after the fact.”
Case in point have been several RB Music and Theatre Sponsors’ concerns.
“We’re bringing up the same ideas and not getting much feedback,” he said. “I personally as a school board member would advocate at the very least we address the comments being made to us.”
VenHorst responded that “when things are said, they don’t go unanswered. The intent is to get an answer from someone, but we do restrain from dialog so it doesn’t devolve.”
Janunas also posed the question of how will candidates look at all the facts and available solutions before voting on major projects that impact taxpayer dollars.
Gasca, who serves as director of career services at Triton College, said she has learned that fiscal responsibility comes down to fiscal priorities, which is where data comes in.
“Doing a better job of identifying our fiscal priorities with community input, with parent input, with student input and then taking it from there,” she said. “Then our stakeholders can hold us to the fiscal priorities.”
West said that the district consists of one school, but that there many administrators – “a superintendent, an assistant superintendent, a principal, a handful of assistant principals and deans, plus all their administrative assistants, and now a public relations manager.”
“If we can come up with the money to have a public relations manager, we can come up with the money for another music teacher,” he said.
Caputo provided an opening statement that underscored the general sentiments reflected by all the candidates Thursday.
“I am an eternal optimist and do not like to dwell upon and describe a problem,” Caputo said. “I prefer to devote my time, energy and attention to finding a solution and achieving a positive outcome.
“There will often be disagreements along the way to solving a problem. People should be able to disagree without being disagreeable.”