A federal judge has rejected a request for an injunction attempting to force the Harwood Unified Union School District to warn petitioned articles on Town Meeting Day that would make it more difficult for the school board to close schools or reconfigure the district.
In a lawsuit initially filed Jan. 24 in state court, the Vermont Coalition for Community Schools, a community group that opposes board proposals to reconfigure the six-town district, argues that both state law and the U.S. Constitution were violated when the Harwood school board declined to warn two articles amending the district’s incorporating documents.
The town of Moretown, as well as Laura Schaller, a parent at Moretown Elementary, are also plaintiffs in the case. At issue are the board’s plans to consolidate middle school students at the Crossett Brook school in Duxbury, including those currently attending seventh and eighth grade at Harwood and fifth and sixth grade at Moretown Elementary.
In mid-January, the Coalition submitted petitions to the board – signed by 5% of the districts’ electorate – to place two articles on the March ballot. The articles, if ultimately approved at the polls, would have given voters – not the school board – the final say on closures or major reconfigurations.
The articles would have also defined a school closure to include “wholly or partially repurposing a school building from classroom instruction to another use,” and a major reconfiguration as any change “that would result in ten or more students from an elementary or middle school being moved to another school.”
The Harwood school board rejected the group’s request on the advice of its attorney, Nicole Mace, of the Burlington-based firm McNeil, Leddy and Sheahan. In a legal brief, Mace argued that the articles were overly broad and would involve the general electorate in matters that were by law within the board’s authority.
“Situations that could conceivably be captured by this language include: the decision to repurpose a school classroom for uses such as administrative offices, food service, storage space, private childcare, and afterschool programs,” Mace wrote.
In response, the Coalition sued, claiming that rejecting the petitions broke state law and violated Schaller and the group’s due process rights and rights “to petition and instruct the government.” They also requested an injunction to place the items on the ballot, and asked the court for a hearing before Jan. 31 in order to meet the warning deadlines for Town Meeting.
But in a 15-page order issued just hours after a Friday morning hearing, U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions III ruled that the plaintiffs hadn’t successfully shown they were likely to succeed on the merits of the case or that “irreparable harm” would come to them if the court didn’t act immediately.
“Plaintiffs submit that the Board’s denial of the petitions deprived them of their constitutional rights. Their supporting memoranda, however, do not fully set forth the contours of their constitutional claims or any corresponding right to relief,” Sessions wrote.
Waitsfield resident Mariah McGill, the president of the Vermont Coalition, said the group hadn’t had a chance to digest the ruling quite yet.
“I think we’re all taking a deep breath and figuring out what comes next,” she said.
“Today’s decision is affirming of the school board’s recent votes on the petitions and in the sound legal guidance we have followed,” Harwood school board chair Caitlin Hollister said in a statement.
Friday’s ruling technically only pertained to the request for an injunction. But certain sections of the order hinted in which direction the judge might rule on the larger merits of the case.
In one part, Sessions wrote that the district denied that the board’s actions, including moving students from Harwood Middle and Moretown Elementary, to Crossett Brook constituted closure.
“The Court need not decide that issue at this time. The Court does find that the Board properly viewed the proposed amendment as usurping the powers granted to school boards by the Vermont Legislature,” he wrote.
