COMMENTARY: Former chair urges voters to share their thoughts with school board

April 20, 2024 | By Torrey Smith 

As you’ve hopefully heard by now, the Harwood School Board has put together a revised budget for consideration by our community’s residents; this second iteration would reduce proposed spending by $2 million and comes in at $48 million. Voting is open in all of the towns already and goes until April 30 when people can vote in person, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

When I was on the school board, one of the biggest challenges was how little control we actually had over the tax rate. Our local education expenses make up only one number in a convoluted formula that also includes a handful of state-mandated adjustments (weighted pupil count, the CLA, the yield, state average spending, for example). 

Every year, local boards are feeling and responding to tremendous pressure to create lean budgets without accidentally inflicting harm on our community’s greatest investment, our children and their schools.

In the March election, I heard reference to a number of people voting “no” as a protest to the state policies that have led to this situation. This kind of “no” vote is a little like cutting off one’s toes to get a particular shoe to fit. The best way to protest state policies is to get in touch with state leaders — legislators and the governor. Voting “no” as a protest has no effect on state policy, but it can do meaningful harm to our institutions — and thus the students they serve. 

Whether you decide to vote “yes” or “no” on April 30th, I hope you will consider also reaching out to the school board to (politely, constructively) let these hardworking neighbors know more about why you are voting the way you did.

This will help them know how to react to the vote — if it’s a yes, what message should they take? If it’s a “no,” what changes should the board look to that might earn them a “yes” next time? Being specific is really valuable — saying it’s too expensive provides no guidance on which changes the community is likely to support. For instance, do you think we should increase class sizes across the district and if so, to how many students? Maybe you think we should reduce programming at the high school so that we can eliminate some positions there? Do you think we should close one or more schools and, if so, which ones? It’s really easy to send a note to the entire school board by just emailing them at this address: cen-huusdboard@huusd.org. You may not hear back from every member, but all of them, and the superintendent, will hear your ideas and add them to their thinking. 

My plan — as a parent, a teacher, and a former school board member — is to support this budget so that the district can hire teachers to staff classrooms next year. Although I know a lot of my neighbors worry about this current budget for understandable reasons, my greater fear is that if the April 30th budget fails, a countdown will begin that we can’t stop. Staff will feel tremendous pressure to secure jobs elsewhere, school leaders (board and administrators) will feel pressure to cut, cut, cut… and what will our students return to in August if those two logical next steps occur? 

Further, how many years will it take to bring our schools back to life if we decimate them in an effort to meet an impossible expectation of level funding?

So, while I will vote “yes” next week, I will also be writing to the school board. I will share my hopes that they use our community’s concerns about costs to initiate some process to consider and get feedback on long-term cost-cutting measures that can be deployed on behalf of our taxpayers as well as the long-term interest of our schools and children. 

Please, whichever way you vote, also do our community a great favor and share your (polite, constructive) thoughts with our school leaders so that they can incorporate them into their decision-making in the near and longer-term future.

Duxbury resident Torrey Smith teaches at Waitsfield Elementary School and is a former chair of the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board.