HUUSD School Board meets Wednesday to reorganize
March 6, 2022 | By Lisa ScagliottiWhen it meets this week, the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board will convene as a much different group than it was last month.
The board meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday for the first time since Town meeting Day for its organizational meeting where among its decisions will be to choose a chair and vice chair for the next year.
The board will get acquainted with four new members just elected on March 1 after six former school directors chose not to seek re-election last week. Returning to the board are eight members.
The 14-member board, however, won’t be at its full capacity because two seats – one each in Duxbury and Fayston – are currently vacant.
In last week’s election, seven seats were on the ballot across five of the district’s six communities. Two of them attracted candidates who filed to run and two more seats were filled with candidates who stepped up as write-ins in February. Duxbury member Cindy Senning was the only incumbent on the ballot as she was appointed last summer and needed to be elected to serve the remaining year in that term. She was unopposed.
The board can proceed with just 12 members to make the decisions needed in the first meeting following the election. Those are to choose officers for the year and name newspapers of record where the district will direct its legal notices and announcements. The Valley Reporter and Waterbury Reader were the newspapers designated last year.
The district’s procedures require that the superintendent open and run the meeting until a chair is elected by the group, at which point the chair then steps in to continue.
Here is a list of the HUUSD School Board members as of this week. The years in parenthesis show when their terms end.
Waterbury: Returning members Kelley Hackett (2023) and Marlena Fishman (2024); newly elected members Victoria Taravella (2025) and Jacqueline Kelleher (2024).
Duxbury: Cindy Senning (2023); one vacancy
Moretown: Returning members Lisa Mason (2023) and Kristen Rodgers (2024)
Fayston: Returning member Theresa Membrino (2024); one vacancy
Waitsfield: Returning member Christine Sullivan (2023) and newly elected member Roberta “Bobbi” Rood (2025)
Warren: Returning member Jonathan Young (2024); newly elected member Ashley Woods (2025)
Newly elected members to the HUUSD School Board
Of the returning members, Sullivan of Waitsfield is the most senior having served on the unified board since it was created in 2016 when the local and high school districts of the Washington West Supervisory Union merged, creating one school board to oversee all seven campuses. Sullivan also is a member of the Waitsfield Selectboard where she was elected in 2021 and has served as chair for the past year.
Wednesday’s meeting will be held in person in the Harwood Union High School library with public access to participate via Zoom. The meeting also is available live and afterward as a recording on the district’s YouTube channel and on Mad River TV. Details are on the meeting agenda.