Community members packed the Harwood Union High School library for an impromptu, mock school board meeting Wednesday night to protest a proposed budget that would cut 13 positions from the district next year.
The district’s teachers union organized the event after the school board earlier this week canceled its scheduled meeting.
Voters will go to the ballot box on Town Meeting Day, March 3, to weigh in on the district’s $39.7 million budget, and union leaders said the community deserved one last opportunity to weigh in.
Sarah Page, a former Harwood teacher who taught in the district for 30 years, took the microphone first and said it was “time for new leadership at the very top of this district.”
And she said she was glad that, as someone who no longer worked at Harwood, she could finally speak her mind.
“It’s kind of hard in this district to be a faculty member and to feel you can speak freely and to feel you can speak without suffering the consequences,” she said.
Harwood’s proposed budget assumes that all middle school students will be consolidated at Crossett Brook, as well as the sixth graders currently attending Moretown Elementary. The school board and administration say doing so will allow the district to save on labor costs without sacrificing programming options.
Harwood School Board Chair Caitlin Hollister said the board was doing the best it could to bring a budget forward that voters would support. With costs rising – health care premiums, in particular, are skyrocketing – and enrollment declining, Hollister said the district needed to find ways to save money to keep tax increases within a reasonable range.
“No one wants to see teachers cut. It’s definitely painful all around,” she said.
And she said the board hadn’t canceled its meeting to silence community opposition. Many members couldn’t attend, Hollister said, and the main topic of discussion was a construction bond that the board hopes to put before voters in a special election on June 9.
“We’re open to suggestions from teachers in terms of what they need from us, and a venue for listening to them,” she said.
The plan to eliminate Harwood Union’s middle school grades and to move some of Moretown’s students has been extremely divisive. The town of Moretown and a community group sued the district and asked a judge for an injunction to put language limiting the school board’s powers on the Town Meeting Day ballot. A federal judge denied their request.
Because the union contract requires staff to be laid off based on seniority, the administration cannot just cut the teachers in Harwood’s middle grades and Moretown’s sixth grade. That means that the district is also planning to reshuffle dozens of educators, in addition to the layoffs.
And while the district’s proposed budget preserves programming, students, teachers, and parents came forward one by one to say that who teaches a particular course matters a great deal.
Beck Andersen, a junior at Harwood, said that he’d seen the digital arts program evolve, under the stewardship of Nathaniel Furlong, from a class students would take for an easy A to “what I believe is the best collection of courses at Harwood.”
One recent graduate, Zetti Thompson, told the crowd that Paul Kramer, a teacher in Harwood’s alternative program for at-risk students, had “saved my education, period.”
“Without him I don’t know what I would be doing, but I definitely wouldn’t be pursuing my dreams or higher education,” she said.
And Catrina Brackett, a Moretown parent, burst into tears – and laughter – as she described Kramer’s influence on her daughter’s experience at school.
“She gives him a run for his money, every day. But so far he’s kept her there,” she said.
Hollister said Thursday that both Kramer and Furlong’s positions had been preserved after other teachers told the administration that they were leaving the district next year.
The majority of speakers on Wednesday night spoke against the cuts. But a handful stood up to defend the board’s proposal.
Waterbury Selectboard Chair Chris Viens berated the union for demanding wages and benefits out of step with what other Vermonters enjoy. And he complained that wealthier transplants to the area were driving lower-income residents out of the district by supporting school budgets – and taxes – that many simply couldn’t afford.
“I think there’s a disconnect between many people out there who are struggling in this state,” he said.
Superintendent Brigid Nease did not respond to a request for comment.
