School board tonight: Restraint-Seclusion Policy adoption, principal hire, pride flag request

May 24, 2023 | By Lisa Scagliotti 

Tonight’s Harwood Unified Union School District School Board meeting has several significant board action items on its agenda including approving the choice for Moretown Elementary School’s principal, adopting a new Restraint and Seclusion Policy, and a request to fly the pride flag during the month of June.

The selection committee that recently reviewed applications and interviewed candidates for a successor to Moretown Elementary School Principal Mandy Couturier recommended the district hire Moretown resident and Harwood alumna Katelyn Liptak for the position.

Liptak currently is associate principal in the First Branch Unified School District in Tunbridge and Chelsea. Coututurer will be moving into a new district special education administrative role starting July 1. The school board approves school principal hires. 

The district also had warned a public hearing for tonight’s meeting on the proposed new policy covering restraint and seclusion practices. The issue has been of high importance this school year after the district’s use of the practices was found to be particularly high among schools in Vermont. Former board member and Brookside Primary School special education teacher Brian Dalla Mura brought the matter to the attention of the board and administration in 2022. The issue also got the attention of national and regional organizations that advocate for schools across the nation to ban restraint and seclusion. Vermont is among a minority of states that still allows the tactics to be used with children as young as preschoolers. 

Last fall, new Superintendent Mike Leichliter called for a ban on prone and supine restraint for this school year and a reduction in using seclusion. School administrators went to work on modifying protocols in school and a school board committee began drafting a new policy to address the issues. 

A parallel process began in Montpelier this year led by Waterbury state Rep. Theresa Wood  with the introduction of a bill that would look to ban restraint and seclusion statewide. Although state lawmakers took testimony, the legislation did not advance and remains pending for the legislature to take up in 2024. 

In April, the school board committee completed its work on a draft policy that calls for the elimination of prone and supine restraints. It also would prohibit seclusion with one exception being “in situations where physical restraint is contraindicated for a particular student.” That exception would only be in place until June 30, 2024, according to the proposed policy. 

Leichliter and other administrators assured the board that they believed the exception is unlikely to be used and that those circumstances are rare and have not occurred this year or in recent memory. Some board members at the April meeting where the draft was advanced for adoption argued for banning seclusion entirely along with the prohibition on the restraint practices, but they did not sway the group. 

The draft policy is on tonight’s agenda for adoption. 

Also on tonight’s agenda is a request to fly the LGBTQIA+ community pride flag for the month of June in observance of National Pride Month. 

Harwood Union High School English teacher Tedin Lange is also advisor to the school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance. In submitting the request, Lange provides a letter from Harwood co-principals supporting the request and the results of a school poll asking students whether the pride flag should be flown during June. It received 296 responses with 78% in support of the flag. 

“Our LGBTQIA+ students are active members of the school community who have an extended

history of promoting a safe and inclusive school environment. Although the majority of their

peers are supportive, members continue to face negative comments in public spaces at

Harwood,” Lange writes in the request. “Flying this flag would acknowledge and support this significant group of students.” 

In 2022, the school board considered a similar flag request in June but the result was that it only flew for the final few days of the school year. A new larger flag is also proposed in the current request.

The school board meets at 6 p.m. in the Harwood library and via Zoom online. The meeting recording can also be found on the board’s YouTube channel and Mad River TV. The agenda has the Zoom link and meeting details.