This commentary is by Timothy Maciel, a member of Vermont Rural Schools Community Alliance.
Rebecca Foster’s recent commentary in VTDigger on the topic of school boards should concern every Vermonter, not just those who oppose artificial turf.
What happened at the Champlain Valley School District board meeting represents something far more troubling than a disagreement over athletic fields. It reflects an alarming breakdown in transparency and accountability. When hundreds of residents invest their time researching an issue, nearly 1,000 people sign petitions, experts offer testimony and local organizations raise legitimate concerns, the public deserves more than silence. It deserves answers.
Instead, according to Foster’s account, the board refused to allow questions of its own consultant, retreated into executive session, emerged without publicly explaining its reasoning and voted to advance a memorandum of understanding that the public had not even been allowed to review.
That is not meaningful public engagement. It is government asking citizens to trust a decision while refusing to explain it.
I have been here before.
In 2019, I campaigned against the school administration’s proposed $1.1 million artificial turf project at Brattleboro Union High School. Before serving on the Windham Southeast School District board, I wrote a two-part Brattleboro Reformer series, “Artificial Turf Versus Natural Grass,” outlining concerns about athlete safety, environmental impacts, chemical exposure, long-term replacement costs and the availability of high-quality natural grass alternatives. Those concerns were debated openly. Residents challenged assumptions, asked difficult questions and demanded evidence. That process made our community stronger, and ultimately the board shelved the school administration’s proposal.
The lesson from Brattleboro was never just about artificial turf. It was about respecting the public enough to answer its questions.
Artificial turf is not a routine purchase. It is a multimillion-dollar, decades-long commitment involving environmental consequences, PFAS forever chemicals and microplastic concerns, athlete safety, replacement costs, maintenance obligations and potential legal liability. Once it’s installed, taxpayers inherit those consequences for years to come.
Given those realities, the questions raised by residents are entirely reasonable.
Why reject a thorough comparison with natural grass? Why not provide a complete life cycle cost analysis? Why not require independent testing of the proposed turf materials? Why dismiss concerns voiced by environmental organizations, conservation commissions, parents, physicians and public health advocates? Why refuse to explain your reasoning before asking the public to accept your decision?
These are not rhetorical attacks. They are exactly the questions responsible elected officials should be prepared to answer.
Instead, the board’s silence speaks volumes.
Public comment is not a procedural box to check before proceeding with a predetermined outcome. Democracy is not accomplished by allowing citizens three minutes at a microphone while withholding meaningful dialogue. Listening without responding is not transparency. Conducting consequential deliberations behind closed doors and then refusing to explain the outcome is not accountability.
School boards derive their authority from the communities that elect them. They are trustees of public funds, public schools and public confidence. When they stop engaging honestly with the people they represent, they begin to erode that confidence.
Whether one supports artificial turf or natural grass is ultimately secondary to a much larger question: What kind of government do we expect at the local level?
If school boards can ignore hundreds of residents, decline to answer straightforward questions, refuse to disclose the basis for major decisions and still claim they have fulfilled their obligation to the public, then we have accepted a standard that should alarm every Vermonter.
The citizens who continue to oppose this project deserve enormous credit. They have organized respectfully, researched the issue thoroughly and insisted on transparency despite repeated frustration. Their persistence is not obstruction — it is civic responsibility.
Every school board member should remember a simple principle: Public office is not about avoiding difficult questions. It is about answering them.
If elected officials are unwilling to explain their decisions to the people they represent, they should not be surprised when the public begins asking a far more fundamental question: Whom does the board believe it serves?
