Police Chief and Superintendent Work Together for Shared Agreement.
On Thursday, October 5, 2017, the Riverside Village Board officially approved an intergovernmental agreement with District 96 for information sharing. The agreement, officially known as a Reciprocal Reporting Agreement, follows state guidelines in the strict School Reporting Act and has been a combined project between the two entities since May 2017.
Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel said, "We've had a reciprocal agreement in the past and just had to recently update it due to changes in Illinois law. This formalizes what we've been doing for some time; state law allows schools, law enforcement and certain other agencies to share information about student misconduct, arrests, or citations.
The Riverside Police Department's law firm, Klein, Thorpe, Jenkins, Ltd. worked directly with the District 96 law firm to draft the reciprocal reporting agreement and followed strict guidelines set out by Illinois law.
Riverside District 96 Superintendent Martha Ryan-Toye said, "We're working together collaboratively to make a safe environment for our schools. This agreement protects student privacy rights and allows the district and the police department to share information when necessary while protecting privacy rights."
Riverside School Board District 96 had previously signed the agreement and the final step was for the Riverside Village Board to do the same.
Riverside Police has this same type of agreement in place with District 208.