Underscoring that they prefer Waterbury voters to pick their own representatives to the Harwood School Board, the Waterbury Select Board recommend that two former school board appointees return to their posts for another year.
At an April 7 meeting, the board interviewed four applicants for two vacant Waterbury seats on the Harwood Unified Union School Board. The board recommended that the Harwood board re-appoint Elizabeth Brown and Dan Roscioli. Both were appointed to the Harwood board in April 2024 when positions representing Waterbury failed to attract candidates in the March 2024 local election. Their appointments ended at the recent Town Meeting Day election on March 4, but neither filed to run for election.
Due to one Waterbury member’s term ending and the three others completing one-year appointments, all four of Waterbury’s Harwood School Board seats were on the March 4 Town Meeting Day election ballot. Just two positions attracted unopposed candidates: Corey Hackett, who was appointed in 2024, won a two-year term; newcomer Rob Dabrowski was elected to a three-year seat.
The select board voted unanimously to recommend appointing Roscioli. The vote to recommend Brown was 3-2 with “no” votes cast by vice chair Kane Sweeney and the board’s newest member Tori Taravella, who just recently completed a term on the school board to run for a select board seat in March.
One Duxbury seat on the Harwood School Board remained vacant after the March election. The Duxbury Select Board last week interviewed and unanimously recommended that the single applicant for that position, Emily Dolloff, be appointed.
Four interviews
Following the March election, the school district asked applicants for the board vacancies submit letters of interest. Previous board members Brown and Roscioli, and newcomers Pamela Eaton and Brooks Fortune did so.
The school district asks select boards to interview potential appointees first to allow for local input from the communities where vacancies occur, given that the positions typically would be decided by the town’s voters.
The four applicants attended last week’s Select Board meeting where they were given several minutes to introduce themselves and share their interest in the school board and to answer questions from board members.
Select Board Chair Alyssa Johnson remarked at the start that the situation should not be the norm. “It is our desire to have our voters vote on our candidates for Harwood School Board,” she said.
Brooks Fortune
Fortune’s interview was first. He said he stepped up after seeing the lack of interest in the school board election where two spots on the ballot were blank. “I felt it my civic duty to come out of the woodwork,” he said.
With one young student currently at Brookside Primary School and a second child starting there in a year, Fortune said he figures they together have about 27 years ahead in their school careers. “He also pointed out that he’s a property owner and is sensitive to concerns around property taxes.
Brooks Fortune, screenshot
Board member Tori Taravella asked Fortune what he hoped to bring to the school board and what he hoped he might gain from serving. “I hope to bring a sense of collegiality and respect to the position. It’s a 14-member board so we all have to work together,” he answered. “And I hope to gain a better understanding about how the school district works, and how it does benefit my children and will continue to benefit them and how it may better benefit them in the future.”
Board member Mike Bard asked if Fortune had thoughts regarding discussions at the state level regarding Gov. Phil Scott’s proposal to overhaul public education funding and governance.
Fortune said he’s reviewed the administration’s proposal but he had not seen proposed legislation yet. He said he has questions such as how new policy would reduce property taxes or improve teacher salaries. He said he favors local control on many matters but, “as of right now, it’s really hard to have a concrete opinion whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea.”
Pamela Eaton
Pamela Eaton, screenshot
Next was Pamela Eaton, a parent of a second grader at Brookside who attended a private kindergarten, switching to public school last year. “School board is something I’ve been interested in for a while,” she said, admitting that she hesitated at the thought of running for election.
“I do want to serve, and if it comes to you selecting me, next year I would put my name on the ballot,” she said, acknowledging that the appointment process is not ideal.
Eaton said her family has had a positive experience so far with school and that its challenges can be overcome. “The lack of community buy-in is concerning,” she said, recalling the 2021 failure of a construction bond that would have renovated Harwood Union High School and merged middle schools.
“One of the things that I hope to bring to the board is the ability to go out in the community to talk to folks about their concerns and tell the community the message of what the board’s doing … to get some of that community buy-in.”
Bard asked about proposed state education reforms. Eaton also said many aspects are still unclear. “It’s hard to know now exactly what it would look like and how it would impact us,” she said. “It sounds really idyllic, right? Like we’re going to save on property taxes, our teachers are going to get pay raises. But how does that look in reality? Coming to that discussion with an open mind and not having preconceived notions about what that would look like or how that would work would be important.”
She concluded: “I’m cautiously neutral, maybe leaning optimistic.”
Elizabeth Brown
Elizabeth Brown, screenshot
Brown followed. During her opening comments though, Fortune left the meeting and did not return. Brown addressed the election question, explaining her job circumstances and adding that she thought other community members might run for the school board openings, but they didn’t. Given the vacancies, she said she decided to apply to rejoin the board. “I do have capacity now to continue as a school board member. I’m excited to continue the work that I think I’ve started,” she said. “There’s a considerable learning curve, and I don’t believe given the environment we’re in we have time to lose to get new candidates up to speed given the significant challenges we face.”
She advocated for the school district to create a multi-year plan, to provide a “long-term vision for the district regardless of what’s going on at the state level,” something she said she is familiar with from her work in finance and strategic planning.
A key consideration will be to lower the Harwood district’s per-pupil costs. “I’m not sure people can appreciate that we’re hitting the ceiling for cost-per-pupil,” she said. “Our district is quite high.”
But future spending cuts need to avoid cutting too deeply into staffing. “None of us want to see teachers, nurses, librarians – anyone else continue to lose their jobs. We’re going to have to get creative in terms of other ways to get our expenses down,” Brown said. “The number-one determinant of student success is great teachers.”
Bard asked about the state proposal to dramatically reduce the number of school districts in Vermont. Brown said she favors consolidation – not the five-district plan the Scott administration has offered, but a 12-district model the Vermont House has proposed.
Consolidating districts and reducing the number of schools in Vermont is probably inevitable, Brown said. But, in a reply to a question from Select Board member Tori Taravella, she added that a key consideration will be to determine how to combine schools without spending too much – something the Harwood board is now looking at to evaluate potentially reconfiguring with fewer school buildings.
Dan Roscioli
Roscioli was the final interview.
Dan Roscioli, screenshot
He reflected on the year since he was appointed to the school board in April 2024, as the board worked to reduce the proposed 2024-25 school budget that voters rejected last March and ultimately took until the end of May on a third vote to pass.
“Last year was all about the budget crisis,” Roscioli said.
The school board heard a clear message from the community for cost control and looking carefully at expenses, he recalled, adding that he joined the school board’s finance committee created for that purpose.
He credited the district’s administrative team and the school board in 2025 for presenting a $49.2 million budget to voters this past Town Meeting Day with an increase under 3%, widely lower property taxes, and some cuts to staffing and services that “passed with flying colors” on the first vote.
But Roscioli cautioned that, “further cuts will feel the pain.”
“This next year is going to be more difficult,” he said, echoing Brown’s desire to see a 3-5 year plan “with targets to get us out of reactionary mode.”
Of the governor’s education transformation plan, Roscioli said, “I’m not a proponent of the governor’s plan. I think it’s too extreme. But I do think consolidation is most likely in the near future.”
Roscioli said the need to lower the district’s per-pupil cost is one factor driving school district leaders to look at restructuring with fewer school facilities. He said the finance committee he’s worked on is paying close attention to the building scenarios put forth to date from another board committee and the architects from TruexCullins hired to present a variety of scenarios. “I don’t see solutions without some form of consolidation,” he said.
A key will be for the district to prepare to reduce the number of schools it has before state changes go into effect, he said. “We can react to it, or prepare for it,” Roscioli said.
Roscioli ended by asking the Select Board if they had requests from the school board members representing Waterbury. Both Taravella and Johnson suggested school board members periodically visit the Select Board to share information.
Recommendations
Clapp nominated and the board voted unanimously to recommend Roscioli to the Harwood board for appointment.
Before voting, Taravella commented that she was pleased to see Roscioli interested in returning to the school board, praising his meeting attendance and his “very noble and vital work” in the past year. “I know you’ve done some very instrumental work in the finance committee and asked some extremely vital questions in your time there,” she said.
In commenting, Taravella also signaled an endorsement: “I think it’s very noteworthy that Dan is the one candidate that has been recommended by the superintendent and the current school board chair. I think that should have some weight in our decision,” she said.
Following the select board meeting, district superintendent Mike Leichliter and school board chair Ashley Woods told Waterbury Roundabout they did not endorse any of the applicants for the Waterbury positions.
Taravella later also clarified her meeting comment, explaining that she was referring to Roscioli’s application form. On the line where it says, “If you were referred or recommended for this position by someone, please share that reference’s name and contact information,” he listed Leichliter and Woods. The other three candidates left that spot blank.
Bard next nominated Brown to be recommended for appointment, commenting that he valued the “on-the-job experience” of the applicants who had already served. “They can do the job on day one,” he said.
Taravella commented that she did not support Brown’s nomination. “I don’t think her experience level is quite the same as Dan’s. She was not at quite as many meetings as him,” she said.
The vote was 3-2 for Brown’s recommendation, with Taravella and Sweeney opposed. Sweeney did not offer any public comment on his vote.
A check of HUUSD School Board attendance from April 10, 2024, through February 2025, when Roscioli and Brown served, found 19 meetings. Waterbury members’ absences were: Hackett and Roscioli, 3 each; Brown, 4; Taravella, 5.
