Riverhead employee contracts to be published on school board web page

The Riverhead School District will soon post all of its employee contracts on the Board of Education section of its website.

A measure to assure contracts are displayed in a clear and transparent manner was approved unanimously at last week’s Board of Education meeting, after board member Laurie Downs added a walk-on resolution to the agenda.

“Before I even got on the board I’ve been asking for transparency,” Ms. Downs said. “We set this goal of transparency, and since I’ve been on the board I’ve asked publicly and I’ve never gotten an answer … People put us here to represent them. They should see what these contracts are. They shouldn’t have to go searching around to SeeThroughNY. It should be right out there. It’s their town, their school district, their money.”

Ms. Downs asked that the entirety of each contract, minus personal information that could lead to an invasion of privacy, be put on the website in PDF form.

The resolution passed with a 6-0 vote last Tuesday. Board member Christopher Dorr was absent from the meeting. 

During the community comment portion prior to the board’s vote, Ms. Downs’ resolution received support from residents Greg Fisher and Joshua Berezny, both of whom are running for school board seats in the upcoming election.

“The issue of the law is this is a public document,” Mr. Fisher said. “It’s already available by law to anybody. This is really, what Ms. Downs is saying, is just procedural to put it easily available to people … I support that.”