Town officials recommend school board candidates as district looks to schedule budget revote

April 3, 2024 | By Lisa Scagliotti 

It’s not often that the Waterbury Select Board holds a discussion about local schools, but Monday’s meeting had a rare item of business for town officials to address – interviewing and recommending candidates to fill three school board positions. 

Three of Waterbury’s four seats on the Harwood Unified Union School Board are currently open, two after no one filed to run for election last month, and one due to a resignation after Town Meeting Day. 

As the largest community in the Harwood Unified Union School District, Waterbury has the most seats on the board; each of the other five communities has two. 

Despite the lack of candidates before election day, four applicants came forward seeking appointment to serve until March 2025. The school district’s process for filling vacancies includes asking town governing bodies to make a recommendation. 

In three unanimous (4-0) votes, the Select Board agreed to forward to the school board their recommendations supporting the appointments of Elizabeth Brown, Corey Hackett and Dan Roscioli. All three are longtime Waterbury residents with children currently in Harwood schools. The board thanked fourth applicant Dan Gwaltney, who moved to Vermont settling in Waterbury in 2022 for stepping up and urged him to consider volunteering for another town board or committee. 

Select Board member Ian Shea was absent on Monday, so a unanimous vote was only four members.

The exercise comes as the school district is preparing for a second vote to approve a budget for the 2024-25 school year. Voters last month rejected the initial $50.8 million proposal, 64% to 35%. The Harwood board meets tonight at 6 p.m. to choose a revised budget and set the date for a second vote. 

The board last week discussed cuts to the failed budget and reached a consensus on a new budget of $48.8 million which is 7.63% higher than the current year’s operating budget. The previous version had a nearly 12% spending increase. Property taxes to support this revised budget are still double-digit increases, in Waterbury’s case they would jump 17%.

The School Board has not yet adopted the new version to put on the next ballot. That step along with setting the date for the next vote – proposed for April 30 – is on tonight’s agenda.

Discussion with the candidates

“We had zero candidates a month ago, and now we have four for three slots,” Select Board Chair Roger Clapp said.

The board devoted 10 minutes to each applicant, inviting each to the table in alphabetical order by last name. Elizabeth Brown was first. A Waterbury resident for the past 18 years, Brown has had a 20-year career in banking, financial services and corporate development. She also is the parent of a fifth grader and a ninth grader in the school district.

“Our education funding system is broken,” Brown began, “Underlying it all is too much complexity, lack of transparency and band aids.”

She said she’s followed the debate in state legislative committees regarding education funding and is frustrated with how state and local education systems aren’t working well together. 

“The problem that Harwood faces is not just getting through this year’s budget. There’s a four-year cliff and taxpayers need to be prepared for large increases not just this year but through 2029,” she said. The district can’t just cut programs, consolidate schools and “watch our buildings crumble,” she said. 

Brown said she would like to see local school boards work together more with the state with a common goal to “bring costs down while improving outcomes.” 

“The Harwood school board has an important role in making it affordable for our taxpayers to remain here,” she said. “Equally we must deliver for our kids, empower our teachers, and provide a sustainable living for them. Doable? I think so.”

She said having a background in financial management and strategic planning makes her well-suited to help with the needed “deep dive” into school district finances to find efficiencies. Also needed, she said is “better communication to our taxpayers so they fully understand what we can control, what we can’t — and that’s up for debate — and how we’re making the most of what we do have to protect and deliver for our students and our teachers.”

Select Board member Mike Bard noted that the failed school budget and a new scenario under discussion rely heavily on attrition to reduce staffing to trim the school budget. He asked each of the candidates asking if they would support deeper cuts to staff that might mean layoffs as well. 

“I haven’t been under the hood. I haven’t seen the line items, but my gut reaction to that is absolutely,” Brown said, acknowledging the difficulty of such a step that would impact friends and neighbors. “When you’re still looking at a 20-25% increase in property taxes and more for three years after that … it’s not doable,” she said. “I think you do have to look at cuts.”  

Select Board member Kane Sweeney, noting that he comes “from a family of teachers,” asked about how to not sacrifice quality while making budget cuts. “How would you solve what seems to be an endless cycle of, ‘we can’t cut it, but we can’t afford it either’?” 

“There’s always efficiencies,” Brown replied. “We’re going to have to do that.”

Next was Dan Gwaltney who told the board he moved to Waterbury in 2022 from North Carolina and currently works as a vice president with an educational tech company. He said his 20-year career in public education has included classroom teaching and administration.

Although he’s relatively new to Vermont, he said, the struggles in public education here are familiar. The challenge: “To the extent where we can maintain healthy environments, maintain our high-performing high standards for learning and outcomes while making that sure we don’t price our communities out of the community through tax increases,” he summed up. 

“None of us like to hear about staff cuts,” Bard said. “How would you look at heavier staff cuts than what the school district is looking at?”

Gwaltney said he would like to see the district look at its programs to decide on cuts. That could mean cutting staff but it also could redirect staff, he said, adding that he doesn’t know the extent to which that has already happened. 

“If all that work has been done and we don’t have programs that are either under-utilized, not utilized, or not delivering effectiveness” and the district can’t sell property or lean on volunteers, “that does, unfortunately, leave personnel that has to go,” Gwaltney replied.  

Next was Corey Hackett, a 20-year Waterbury resident and parent of three children currently in Harwood schools. His spouse, Kelley Hackett, is a preschool teacher who just served four years on the Harwood board, the past two as vice chair. He said he regretted not filing to run for Kelley’s open seat before the March 5 election. “It hurt to see that there were no names on that ballot,” he told the Select Board. 

Hackett worked for Keurig for more than a decade and now works as a project manager for a construction contracting firm in South Hero. He also previously served on the town zoning board before the development review board was created. More recently, he said he has followed the school board closely. “I’ve watched almost every meeting for the past four years,” he said. “I have a good awareness of what’s going on.”

Hackett said he appreciates the administration and board’s approach so far to rely on attrition to reduce staffing. As for deeper staff cuts, “I would need to understand what those cuts would mean to our students and community,” he said.

Hackett said he believes the district is doing a better job than some understand in offering students opportunities to learn the trades and those programs through internships and the Central Vermont Career Center for example could be better communicated to the public. 

Clapp asked how Hackett views the role of school board member. “There are six towns participating in this unified school board. Waterbury is the largest one,” he said. “But there are others that are fiercely resisting, trying to protect their primary schools with minimal numbers of students — what do you see your role being?”

“I see it as a conduit to the voice for Waterbury,” Hackett replied, adding that it also means bringing board information to the community. “I think everybody needs to have an opinion at the table. Differences are good,” he said. “I think it’s important understanding all the parties involved on the other side of the valley. Try to understand their positions.”

Last up was Dan Roscioli, another longtime Waterbury resident, parent of four children who are or have attended Harwood schools, and a small business owner for two decades. He began by addressing the situation of the vacant school board seats that attracted no candidates to the Town Meeting Day ballot. 

“Serving on a school board I think is a pretty thankless position and they tend to get beat up a little bit,” he said. “And I think on some level, everybody knew that the next five years of finances is going to be a disaster and who wants to sign up for that voluntarily, right?”

He said he was happy to see he was one of four candidates interested in serving on the school board. 

“We all know the state school finance system is broken. We don’t have control over that piece,” he said. “The role of the [school] board has to focus on the controllables that we have.” Property taxes growing by 20-25% each year is untenable, Roscioli said. “A hundred percent tax increase in four years is a tough pill to swallow.”

He said he would approach the school district’s finances using his entrepreneurial experience. “As a small business owner for 20 years, I’ve kind of made a career of doing more with less,” he said. 

While the administration should be charged with finding the “nickles and dimes” to save, Roscioli said he would like to see the school board look at the broader picture and consider innovating to restructure and make schools more efficient. For example, he said he questions why staffing levels have grown while enrollment remains flat. He also suggested keeping some elements of hybrid learning that schools used during the COVID-19 pandemic that might offer flexibility for some students to be successful.

“I don't have all the answers necessarily, but I think I can ask the right questions,” he said. 

Sweeney again asked about balancing quality and cost. “How do we maintain at least some level of a decent education while we’re cutting staff and cutting extra fat?”

Roscioli recalled the attempt several years ago to consolidate 7th- and 8th-grade classes at Crossett Brook Middle School and add students there from Moretown as well. The shift would have meant about $6 million of construction at Crossett Brook. “Maybe we should look at how do we align grades,” Roscioli said. “What if all the primary schools were K-4 … so each school is in more of a sweet spot in terms of capacity.” Perhaps Harwood could be an 8-12 school freeing up some space at Crossett Brook he offered. “Some of those questions I don’t think have even been looked at,” he said. 

Comments from the public 

Before the board voted, several members of the public offered comments. 

Waterbury resident Steven Martin said he’s attended recent school board meetings to follow the school budget debate. “I think all of the [board] members currently there are good people with good intentions,” he said. “It is heavily weighted in my opinion to people that are not looking at any possibility of staff cuts, student ratios anything like that. I would like to see the board recommend some people who can provide some balance.”

Also in the audience was Jake Pitman, whose resignation from the school board last month opened up one of the three seats now to be filled. He said he appreciated hearing the candidates speak about their qualifications from their jobs and experience, but he cautioned the candidates and Select Board about the school board’s structured and somewhat cumbersome process. “It’s a lot more complicated than just raising your hand during a board session and saying, ‘this is my idea,’” he said. 

Board members hear from administrators who present information and then engage in discussion, he explained. “At the end of the day, it takes quite a lot for just a regular board member to actually bring a motion to the table to suggest a very significant and tangible idea that they have,” he said. “General debate and communicative skills among board members might be a little more valuable than you think… the ability for a school board member to come to the table and have a healthy respectful discussion is very valuable.”

Chris Viens, a former Waterbury Select Board chair, spoke next addressing both the board and the 20 or so other members of the audience. “It appears to me that we started out with a campfire that’s now become a forest fire and Smokey the Bear is nowhere in sight,” he said. “And this forest fire … it’s gonna burn a lot of people out of our homes.”

Viens, who grew up in Fayston and Waterbury and went to Harwood Union High School, said he hopes that today’s Harwood graduates will be able to find jobs that pay well so they can remain in the community. “As we continue to burn ourselves out, it’s only going to become harder and harder to live here,” he said. 

The system is broken, Viens continued, recalling the state’s push to consolidate school districts as a path to be more cost-efficient. “I encourage everybody to continue to vote down the budget and budgets across the state until it gets forced back to the State House … that’s where I believe the problem started.” 

Pitman disagreed and warned of the consequences should the school budget fail to win approval. “If you don’t want to see staff cuts or you don’t want to see very many staff cuts, oh boy, will you see them then,” he said. “It would be a catastrophe if the budget fails a second time.”

Packed April school board schedule 

Despite Monday’s discussion at the Select Board, timing will not allow for the Waterbury candidates to participate in deciding the revised budget for the next ballot. 

The School Board will interview the Waterbury applicants at its April 10 meeting, according to Chair Ashley Woods of Warren. New board members also need to be sworn in by their town clerk before they take their seats at the table. That would mean the April 17 meeting will be the first opportunity for the 14-member School Board to be at full strength and Waterbury fully represented.

Tonight’s School Board meeting will be held via Zoom only. This is an extra meeting added to the board’s schedule to set the budget revote. 

In addition to finalizing the warning for the election, the board also has on its list creating a committee to work on publicity for the new budget proposal. It also will consider scheduling two public information meetings on the revised budget ahead of the vote. The dates on the agenda for the board to consider are Thursday, April 18, for a meeting held both in person and via Zoom, and Thursday, April 25, as an online meeting only. 

Tonight’s School Board meeting link is in the agenda. In addition to Zoom, School Board meetings are streamed online on the district’s YouTube channel and available there and on Mad River Valley TV as recordings afterward. 

Waterbury Select Board meetings are recorded and available to view online at ORCA Media. The April 1 recording is posted here.