Harwood School Board fills seats following just two of three selectboard recommendations
April 21, 2025 | By Lisa ScagliottiMay 7 Clarification: This story reports that Pam Eaton’s appointment to the Harwood School Board was approved after the board chair voted, making the vote 8-1, which amounted to 53.85% yes to 5% no. Without her vote, it was 7-1, with the 7 votes representing just 46.65% affirmative.
But since the meeting, school officials have clarified that was because the tally spreadsheet the board used factored all 14 board members’ voting weights as 100%. At the April 16 meeting, there were only 9 voting board members present.
Once they adjusted the calculation to make the voting weight of the 9 present equal to 100%, it is clear that the 7-1 vote was more than enough to approve Eaton’s nomination (79.27% to 8.5%). Board Chair Ashley Woods’ vote was not critical to it passing; it brought the final vote to 8-1 for a weighted total of 91.5% to 8.5%. ~ L.Scagliotti
The Harwood Unified Union School District School Board made three appointments last week, filling vacancies left by the March election—but it followed just two of three recommendations from select boards in Waterbury and Duxbury.
The school board voted unanimously to appoint Dan Roscioli to a Waterbury seat and Emily Dolloff to a Duxbury seat. Roscioli served on the school board for the past year after being appointed in April 2024, but he did not seek election on Town Meeting Day. Lifelong Duxbury resident Dolloff is new to the school board, succeeding Life LeGeros, whose term ended in March.
The board’s appointments of Roscioli and Dolloff followed recommendations from the Waterbury and Duxbury select boards. But when it came to filling the second Waterbury school board opening, the school board made a different choice.
The Waterbury board also recommended Elizabeth Brown for one of the school board openings. Like Roscioli, Brown was appointed last April 2024 to a vacant position. She served until March and also did not file to be a candidate in the Town Meeting Day election.
Harwood School Board Chair Ashley Woods of Warren announced to the board that Roscioli and Brown were recommended by the town board. The select board reached that decision on April 7 after interviewing Brown and Roscioli, along with two other applicants.
But in considering the second Waterbury vacancy, the school board decided to give its support to Waterbury lawyer Pamela Eaton, who in applying for the position said she considered running in the March election, but hesitated. She also said she would be willing to run for election next year as appointments run just until the next local election.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Eaton was seated beside Waterbury Select Board member Tori Taravella who just recently ended a three-year term on the Harwood School Board. Taravella did not seek re-election to the school board in March because she instead ran for and won a one-year seat on the select board.
A friend’s recommendation
At the start of Wednesday’s meeting, Taravella addressed the school board during the public comment period. Seated before her former colleagues, Taravella did not mention her new role on the Waterbury Select Board. She instead spoke of her personal and professional relationship with Eaton, offering a strong recommendation that the board appoint her.
“Pam was one of the first people to welcome me into the Vermont legal community when I moved here in 2019 at that time, she provided me with valuable advice and information as I was looking for a job and trying to decide what area I wanted to practice, she continued to keep in touch with me over the years, offering me advice on tricky cases, introducing me to members of the of the bar, and just generally, making sure I was happy with where I was in my profession.”
She pointed to Eaton’s service in a young lawyers professional group and noted that Eaton has strong connections in the Waterbury community. “She is kind, a good listener, intelligent and extremely motivated,” Taravella continued. “I am honored to know Pam Eaton, and would be happy to have her representing me on this board.”
Eaton was one of four applicants for the two Waterbury vacancies on the school board. At the April 7 Waterbury Select Board meeting, neither Eaton nor Taravella mentioned their relationship. The select board voted unanimously to recommend Roscioli for appointment. It voted 3-2 to recommend Brown with Taravella and select board Vice Chair Kane Sweeney casting the two “no” votes. The board did not vote on whether or not to recommend Eaton or Brooks Fortune, the fourth candidate before them. Fortune afterward withdrew his name from consideration before the school board’s April 16 meeting, to which he received an invitation.
“I withdrew my application yesterday morning out of deference to the Selectboard's recommendation,” he said in an email to the Waterbury Roundabout on Thursday, adding that he wishes Eaton success. “She is well-qualified for this role,” he said.
No discussion of recommendations
At the Harwood board’s meeting, Roscioli, Brown, Eaton and Dolloff all were allowed several minutes to address the board before it voted to make the appointments. They echoed remarks made in their select board interviews beforehand. (Dolloff received a unanimous recommendation for the school board seat from the Duxbury Selectboard on April 14.)
In her comments to the school board, Eaton stressed that her work as a lawyer requires good communication skills that she would put to use as a school board member if appointed. “I think that I can help this board to make sure that our messaging is getting across to the community for what we're trying to do,” she said. “And I think what we're trying to do is educate a generation of students to come to live in Vermont to take over our jobs and to be in our workforce and to continue to have our communities thrive and flourish, and so I think the work on this board is essential for that.”
Wood said afterwards in an interview that the process the board then used mirrored how the Waterbury Select Board voted on making its recommendations: they voted on each open position separately.
Woods asked for nominations and Roscioli’s name was offered first. Just eight members of the 14-member Harwood board voted. In addition to the three empty positions, two board members were absent – Waitsfield member Bobbi Rood and Waterbury member Corey Hackett. Rood arrived late to the meeting, in time to cast a vote on the third appointment, which was for Dolloff to the Duxbury position, after the Waterbury appointments were made. As chair, Woods did not vote on Roscioli’s appointment, which received an 8-0 vote amounting to 51.65% given the board’s weighted voting system.
The next nomination was for Eaton, made by Warren member Jonathan Young. He pointed to Taravella’s endorsement and also noted that Eaton would bring legal expertise that Taravella added to the board during her tenure. Woods agreed, “I feel like that legal presence is also important,” she said.
Fayston member Mike Bishop, who works for the town of Waterbury as its zoning administrator, asked about the Waterbury recommendation. “I’m wondering, did the town of Waterbury give any indication why [Eaton] wasn’t chosen?” Bishop asked. Woods replied that town officials only communicated their choices and did not comment on the other applicants.
Bishop noted that Eaton works for a Burlington law firm that does legal work for the town of Waterbury. “And I see she’s down here with a select board member,” he remarked.
The board moved on to voting on Eaton’s nomination with Bishop being the single vote against it. The 7-1 vote, however, only meant 46.65% were in favor. Woods, whose vote carries a 7.2% weight, added her “yes” and the appointment was approved.
Bishop after the meeting said he found the appointment process problematic. “It’s concerning that their friendship wasn’t acknowledged at the previous meeting,” he said of Taravella and Eaton’s association. “And that [Eaton’s] law firm is being paid by the town for various legal matters.”
Waterbury Town Manager Tom Leitz confirmed that the town has hired the Burlington law firm Paul Frank and Collins to assist the town with labor negotiations as the town staff has recently formed a labor union. Eaton is not involved in that work, however, Leitz said, noting that he said he was unaware Eaton worked for the firm.
Select board’s assessment
Reached after the Harwood board made its appointments, members of the Waterbury Select Board were curious as to why the school board followed only one of their recommendations.
“What did they have to say to not honor Waterbury’s recommendation? This has never happened before,” asked select board member Mike Bard, who nominated Brown for reappointment at the April 7 meeting.
Told that the school board did not discuss Brown’s recommendation, Bard replied, “Why did they even ask us then? That’s very troublesome.”
Select Board Chair Alyssa Johnson pointed out that the final decision on appointments rests with the school board. “It’s the school board’s prerogative to accept or not accept our recommendation,” she said.
Select Board member Roger Clapp said the situation illustrates why he and the select board prefer that elected offices get decided by the voters and not by appointment afterward.
“The School Board isn’t obliged to accept our recommendations,” Clapp acknowledged. “I’m aware of some of the internal politics and felt that experienced candidates might better serve the town’s interests.”
Asked about why the school board didn’t discuss or vote on Brown’s recommendation, Woods said she took cues from the group that they did not want to discuss reappointing Brown. “The board was ready to move on,” she said. “Should we have talked about the recommendation? Sure, we should have.”
Woods pointed to Taravella’s support as “a very popular board member” carrying weight with her former board members. Young, who nominated Eaton, agreed. “I gained a lot of respect for Tori while she was on the board, and frankly, her recommendation carries a lot more weight than that of the select board,” Young said. “So that, coupled with the fact that Pam is also a lawyer, made it an easy decision for me to nominate her.”
Asked about her choice not to identify herself at the school board meeting as a member of the Waterbury Select Board now, Taravella said she thought adding that might have been confusing. “It’s not something I was trying to hide,” she said, explaining that she opted instead to just state her name and that she was from Waterbury. “This has been a learning lesson for me,” she said.
Reached after the school board’s decision to appoint Eaton, Brown said she did not want to comment on the appointment process, but that she wishes Eaton well in her new role.
Bard said he believes Brown, who has a professional background in finance and strategic planning, may have been unpopular on the school board. “I think the school board sometimes is not as open to dissenting views as they should be,” he said.
He also raised the same point as Bishop that the select board should have known about Taravella’s personal relationship with Eaton. “She knows better,” he said, noting that the select board just recently discussed the topic of disclosing information that could be or could give the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The Waterbury Select Board at its March 31 meeting approved an updated Conflict of Interest policy that Taravella helped draft by combining a prior town policy with new recommended guidelines from the state of Vermont.
Taravella pointed out that the policy does not require board members “to disclose who your friends are.” In her remarks to the school board and to Waterbury Roundabout, Taravella said that there wasn’t an opportunity to mention her relationship with Eaton at the select board meeting.
She pointed out that Waterbury Select Board members “asked the candidates questions, but did not really get a chance to discuss each one. The board voted on Dan and Elizabeth before we talked about Pam. So I didn’t get a chance to say the nice things about her that I wanted to.”
Johnson acknowledged the select board’s new conflict policy, saying that it’s “best practice to be more transparent.” But she also emphasized that the select board did not vote on whether to recommend Eaton, so Taravella never cast a vote on her friend’s application. “We had two motions made on folks who were not Pam,” she said.
As for Taravella’s appearance before the school board to endorse a candidate not recommended by the select board, Johnson said, “Select board members are also community members. They’re welcome to give their personal input, saying they’re not speaking on behalf of the board.”
The April 16 Harwood School Board meeting video recording is posted online on the board’s YouTube channel here.