Editor,

This letter is in response to the letter published by a former RSU 21 school board member on March 22 titled, “A Rush to Judgement.”

While I agree with the statement that we should not be heaping the blame onto the school district all at once and it is true that racism is learned outside of the school more than inside,  I do not believe anyone was blaming the RSU 21 school district for the racist actions of the students that had occurred nor are parents abdicating their responsibility to raise their children with equal respect for others.

In fact, much of the community outrage in this case was not just surrounding this particular racist incident, but also how the superintendent and administration handled the incident with the school board and the public, made apparent by some of the individual board member responses at the meeting directly following the exposing news article.  Learning of anything negative in our community schools after the fact through media publication is unacceptable and that blame does fall squarely on the superintendent, administration, and school board for not informing the public promptly.

Furthermore, rushing to spend tax dollars on two additional investigations likely to come to similar conclusions and determinations as the Maine Human Rights Commission investigation that is still ongoing doesn’t make sense to me for redundancy concerns, but also just my opinion.

The taxpayers of the three towns in RSU 21 put their trust in the school board members we elect to govern the district accordingly, exercise responsible use of taxpayer funds, and most importantly conduct oversight which includes being the counter balance to the superintendent that they hire.  We as a community should expect nothing less than total transparency.

Noel Holmes

Arundel