Voters approve school budget questions, elect three new members

March 3, 2021  |  By Lisa Scagliotti 

Voters on Tuesday approved a plan to allocate $1 million of a $2.2 million school budget surplus from 2020 to spend on future maintenance projects at school facilities. Harwood Union High School is in need of multiple repairs and upgrades. File photo by Gordon Miller.

After voting twice on the school budget in 2020, voters in the six towns of the Harwood Unified Union School District on Tuesday took care of business on the first try this year. 

They approved the $40.39 million proposed budget by a margin of essentially 60-40%. The second school-finance question on the ballot about allocating a $2.2 million surplus from 2020 won by an even wider spread with 64 percent of the vote overall. 

Results on the two ballot articles for the school district budget and surplus allocation were counted and reported by town this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the desire by town and school officials to not physically gather in order to combine and count ballots. Source: Each town clerk’s results and HUUSD totals

Voters across the district also cast ballots to fill seven of the district school board’s 14 seats -- returning four incumbents and electing three new members to the six-town board. 

The budget passed with an overall vote tally of 1,808 to 1,180. And for the first time since the district merged in 2017, town-by-town election returns were available on the school finance questions. They show that on the budget, voters in Duxbury, Moretown and Fayston were sharply divided. It passed by just six votes in Duxbury, 21 in Fayston, and 29 in Moretown (see chart). 

In Waterbury, support for the budget was stronger with it passing by a nearly 2:1 margin, 709-371. 

Duxbury voters also narrowly approved the surplus allocation by 13 votes, 171-158. Fayston had the next-closest margin on that question, 124-83. In Waterbury, 69% of the voters approved the surplus, 738-331.

That asked voters to sign off on a plan to allocate an extra $2.2 million that the district ended with in June 2020 three ways: $600,000 is included as revenue in the fiscal year 2022 budget which goes into effect July 1. The largest portion -- $1 million -- will now go into the maintenance reserve fund to pay for projects at any of the district’s seven campuses. The remaining $615,456 would be set aside as a “rainy day fund” for either operations or maintenance. 

The school district’s annual report contains a list of maintenance projects for the future although some may be included in a construction bond. 

The individual town results were available because school districts and municipalities were allowed to make adjustments to how they held elections this Town Meeting Day due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The school district decided to skip combining ballots with the budget-related questions. In a typical non-covid election, school budget and other finance questions are on ballots collected separately by election officials in each town. Those ballots are then combined and hand-counted to produce just one overall tally. No individual town results are usually counted. 

The questions this year were printed on ballots that were able to be read by vote-tabulation machines so they were included in the individual town election results. 

Elections fill seven seats 

Unlike the budget, however, school board members are elected by the voters in the towns they represent, so those ballots are always counted and reported by the town where they are cast.

Voters in five of the district’s six towns elected seven of the 14 seats on the school board on Tuesday.

Three of Waterbury’s four seats were decided:

• Incumbent and Chair Caitlin Hollister was unopposed for a one-year unexpired term.

• Incumbent Michael Frank, appointed in 2020, won election to a full three-year term along with Marlena Tucker-Fishman. 

Waterbury representative Alexandra Thomsen stepped down this year and Kelley Hackett was elected in 2020 to a three-year term.  

In Duxbury, Brain Dalla Mura was the lone candidate for the two years remaining in the term Alec Adams won in 2020; Adams resigned earlier this year. 

In Warren, Jonathan Young was the lone candidate for a three-year term.  Incumbent Theresa Membrino in Fayston was unopposed for another term. In Moretown, Kristen Rodgers easily won re-election, 372-116, over newcomer Sam Rosenberg.

Moretown votes against leaving HUUSD 

Moretown voters on Tuesday rejected by a vote of 360-201 a ballot item brought by petition asking whether it was time to leave the Harwood Unified Union School District. The selectboard was not keen on the measure saying more study was needed to consider such a big move in order to understand what might happen next if it passed.  

The item was organized by a citizen group unhappy with the consolidated district since the 2017 merger and with attempts over the past couple of years to shift students from Moretown Elementary to other schools in the district. For example, a 2020 proposal to move Moretown grade 5 and 6 students to Crossett Brook Middle School was unpopular and ended up not coming to fruition when the budget failed and the COVID-19 pandemic began. 

More discussion regarding middle school configuration is expected this year.

The budget voters approved for fiscal year 2022 this week does not call for any reconfigurations of schools in the 2021-22 school year. The school board has paused plans for merging middle school classes into space at Crossett Brook Middle School. However, the budget does include funding for architects to continue work on building needs related to long-term maintenance and reconfiguration that will likely lead to a construction bond potentially as soon as November. 

The budget adds funds to create a human resources staff position for the district. That function to date has been handled by the superintendent. The budget also will pay for a search process to replace Superintendent Brigid Nease whose contract ends in 2022 and she has said she will not seek to renew it.  

A recent school board vote after the budget was completed for the March 2 ballot has appeared to create a sum of unallocated funds in the 2022 budget. The 6-6 decision that passed due to the board’s weighted voting system will cut four of the eight core classroom teaching positions at Harwood Middle School for next fall. That will reduce spending by about $300,000, school officials estimated. Those funds are still included in what the district raises in taxes for next year. 

Superintendent Nease said those funds could help cover costs of staffing needs elsewhere in the district as they fluctuate between now and when next school year begins.  

The tax rates to support next year’s budget vary across the district from $1.77 per $100 assessed property value in Waitsfield to $1.88 in Duxbury; Waterbury’s rate would be $1.85 per $100 in value. The latter translates to an increase of $275 on a home valued at $250,000. More detail on the tax impacts are in the budget detail on the school district’s website, huusd.org. 

The Town Meeting Day election included the most pressing school-related decisions for voters to address now -- the budget articles and board elections. Other routine housekeeping items will be covered in a separate annual meeting tentatively scheduled for May 19 at 6 p.m. later this spring.