Voters to decide half of Harwood’s school board seats including 3 from Waterbury
December 19, 2020 | By Lisa Scagliotti 
The Harwood Union Unified School Board meets on Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on in-person gatherings. The board is pictured here at its Dec.16 meeting along with Superintendent Brigid Nease and district Director of Finance Michelle Baker joining. Not pictured is member Theresa Membrino of Fayston. Screenshot.
The Town Meeting Day election in March will be an important one for the Harwood Union Unified School District School Board as voters will get to elect members to half of its 14 seats.
The board with representatives from the district’s six communities has five seats up for election this year as terms expire. One Waterbury seat is up for election as it was temporarily filled after a resignation earlier this year; and an upcoming Duxbury resignation will add one more spot to be decided on March 2.
The board has two members each from Duxbury, Moretown, Fayston, Waitsfield and Warren; Waterbury with a substantially larger population has four seats. Each term is three years.
The single board was created as part of the school district’s 2017 merger which consolidated the towns’ former elementary school districts and the union high school district – all with their own school boards – from a supervisory union model into a unified district. The one board now oversees the district’s seven schools.
All candidates – incumbents, challengers and newcomers – have until Jan. 25 to file the necessary forms to get on the March ballot. Given the COVID-19 pandemic and public health guidelines that stress social distancing, the state has waived the customary requirement for candidates to obtain signatures of voters in their communities in order to run.
Possible board restructuring
As this consequential election nears, the board is discussing its own structure and asking whether it might take steps to reconfigure itself. A subcommittee has begun discussing restructuring into a smaller body – a move that would require voters to weigh in.
A brief discussion of the topic at this week’s meeting ended in a 7-7 vote to continue working on this idea at the Jan. 13 meeting when the board meets next.
Because of the board’s weighted voting system, the vote carried 53.35% in favor to 46.65% against. Three of Waterbury’s representatives, both of Duxbury’s members, and one each from Warren and Waitsfield supported further restructuring conversations. The rest of the board was opposed.
Vice Chair Torrey Smith of Duxbury who is on the committee looking at whether to alter the board’s model was careful to note that the vote was not supporting a specific proposal, but just to keep talking about options with the possibility of putting something to voters in March.
The board is designed with a structure to reflect the population distribution within the school district. That is addressed by the number of representatives per town as well as the weight each member’s vote carries in decision-making. Each member has a percentage value assigned to their vote with the total adding up to 100%.
The vote weighting breaks down like this: Each Waterbury member’s vote counts as 9.85%; the two votes apiece for Warren and Waitsfield count as 6.7% each; Moretown’s two votes weigh in at 6.45% each; Fayston’s two votes count as 5.25% each; Duxbury’s carry the least weight at 5.2% apiece.
So as the vote regarding restructuring discussions demonstrates, it’s possible for six or seven members to prevail without having a majority of the voting members.
Looking ahead to the March election, the Waterbury Roundabout reached out to all of the incumbents who would be up for election in March to inquire about their plans; all but one replied. Below is a breakdown.
Waterbury
Of Waterbury’s four members, two have terms expiring in March: Caitlin Hollister and Alexandra Thomsen. A third Waterbury member, Michael Frank, was appointed in March 2020 to serve until March 2021 after former member James Grace resigned just over a year into his three-year term. Frank’s seat will be on the ballot as one year of an unexpired term for voters to fill. He told the Waterbury Roundabout that he plans to run in March but he has not yet decided whether he will run for the term with just one year left, or if he will seek a three-year seat.
Hollister, who serves as board chair, said she has not yet decided whether she will seek another term. She joined the Waterbury-Duxbury School Board in 2016, the year prior to merger, to fill a vacancy when member Colleen Ovelman stepped down. She was later elected to her seat on the new board.
Thomsen began her school board service before the district merged, joining the previous Waterbury-Duxbury board in 2014. She said she will not seek re-election in 2021.
“I am grateful for the way the school board has challenged me, stretched my mind and allowed me to get to know some really smart, caring people. I also have so much greater perspective on the amazing, hard work that people do in our schools and how lucky our district is,” Thomsen said in an email to the Roundabout.
Kelley Hackett is Waterbury’s fourth board member who was elected in March 2020. Her term ends in March 2023.
Duxbury
Duxbury has two members on the school board: Vice Chair Smith whose term ends in March 2022, and Alec Adams who ran and won election this past March to a three-year term.
Adams, however, has since had a change of heart. In a Dec. 10 Front Porch Forum post, he announced that he will be stepping down in March, leaving two years of his term for the voters to fill in the 2021 election.
Adams said he was motivated to run by an interest in the board’s discussions of a construction bond for improvements to Harwood Union High School and Crossett Brook Middle School, the school budget in general, and leadership of the district with the superintendent’s contract up for renewal. However, he noted, the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated matters. “COVID has presented serious issues in my own line of work (working at UVM) which has taken up much of my time and thinking. With a succession plan in place for HUUSD leadership and the bond matter on hold for now, it is a good time for someone else to slide in and assume my seat (for the next two years),” he wrote. “It was [a] great learning experience for me, now having a deeper understanding of how public school governance works and the importance a board member's role is in shaping policy and direction for all of our schools. And I greatly appreciated all of the support from the Duxbury community.”
Moretown
Kristen Rodgers won election to the school board in 2019 to serve the remaining two years of a term previously held by Peter Langella and filled briefly by appointment by Linda Hazard until the 2019 Town Meeting election. Rodgers’ term ends in 2021. She told the Roundabout that she is considering running again and will mull it over with her family over the holidays.
Lisa Mason is Moretown’s other representative on the board having just been elected to her seat in March. Her term ends in March 2023.
Fayston
Fayston school board member Theresa Membrino was elected 2018 for a three-year term that ends in March 2021. She could not be reached for comment on whether she plans to seek re-election.
Tim Jones is Fayston’s other school board member and his term ends in 2022.
Warren
Rosemarie White’s school board service also predates the 2017 Harwood Union merger. She was a member of the previous Harwood Union High School Board and has served on the new unified board since its inception. White said it’s time for her to step aside and she will not seek re-election in March.
Jonathan Clough is Warren’s other board member. His term expires in March 2022.
Waitsfield
Neither of Waitsfield’s two seats on the board is up for election in 2021. Christine Sullivan was just elected in 2020, so her term ends in March 2023. Jeremy Tretiak’s term is up in 2022.
Adapting Town Meeting in a pandemic
Town Meeting Day 2021 is likely to look different than usual given the COVID-19 pandemic. The state Legislature passed a measure this fall looking ahead to the March 2 election to make allowances for public health guidance.
Because holding large gatherings indoors will likely not be possible in early March, governing bodies in cities and towns – select boards and city councils – are permitted to conduct all voting by Australian (paper) ballot, according to the bill labeled Act 162 that the Legislature passed. Typically such a shift is decided by the voters in a community at town meeting with the change implemented the subsequent year. Act 162 passed in September enables the local legislative body alone to enact this change just for 2021.
State lawmakers may consider allowing for other adjustments to Town Meeting Day when they convene in Montpelier in January. Will Senning who oversees elections in the Secretary of State’s office said one proposal legislators may debate is whether to allow municipalities to postpone their meeting and elections until later in the spring so they may still hold an in-person meeting outdoors.
The communities in the Harwood Union district all hold in-person meetings with a combination of voting by paper ballot on some questions and floor voting deciding others.
For now, Town Meeting Day is March 2 and the deadline to file to run for office is Jan. 25.
How to run
School board members are elected by voters in their own town yet their responsibilities are to make decisions in the best interest of the entire school district.
Those wishing to run for an open seat need to file the necessary paperwork with their town clerk by the deadline. The process is less involved this year given the elimination of the signature requirement.
The school board has information on its website intended to inform potential candidates about how the board operates, the time commitment (regular meetings on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month) and duties of board members. Board members, for example, receive an annual stipend of $750. It also has specific details regarding how to get on the March Town Meeting Day ballot.