New Waterbury vacancy opens as Harwood board looks to fill Moretown seat
March 18, 2026 | By Lisa Scagliotti UPDATE March 19: At its March 18 meeting, the school board appointed Caitlin Lovegrove to the vacant Moretown seat to serve until March 2027. It also appointed Waitsfield member Bobbi Rood to be the board’s rep to the Central Vermont Career Center board. It also voted to continue its Public Outreach Committee with Chair Steven Rosenberg and members Cindy Senning, Rob Dabrowski and Macon Phillips, and the Building Use and Visioning Committee with J.B. Weir as chair and members Pam Eaton, Langford Davidson and Cindy Senning. The meeting also featured a student report on the recent Harwood student trip to Rwanda. See the meeting recordings on the district’s YouTube channel here.
Having re-elected its leaders last week, the Harwood school board was looking to fill its lone vacancy after the Town Meeting Day election tonight, when another seat opened up with the resignation of a Waterbury member.
The Harwood Unified Union School District School Board meets tonight at 6 p.m. in the Harwood Union Middle/High School library, where it has a single applicant to consider to appoint to an open board seat representing Moretown. Former member Ben Clarke did not seek re-election earlier this month when his term ended.
One applicant, Caitlin Lovegrove, expressed interest in the appointment, which would run until the March 2027 local election. The board is scheduled to interview Lovegrove tonight and make the appointment.
On Tuesday, Corey Hackett, one of Waterbury’s four members on the 14-member board, announced his resignation to board leaders and Superintendent Mike Leichliter. Hackett has served on the board since 2024, when he was appointed to serve for a year. In 2025, he was elected to serve the remaining two years of a term that ends in 2027.
He cited both work and family obligations as reasons why he does not think he can give his school board responsibilities the attention they require.
“Serving this district over the past two years has been an honor. Following my wife’s four years of service, it has been a privilege for our family to contribute to the growth and success of our local schools,” Hackett wrote to the district leaders. Hackett joined the board after his spouse, Kelley Hackett, served as a Waterbury member from 2020 to 2024.
“However, due to recent changes in my professional responsibilities and, more importantly, a significant health development within my immediate family that requires my full attention and presence, I no longer have the bandwidth to fulfill my board duties with the focus they deserve,” Hackett explained. “I am grateful for the opportunity to have served alongside such dedicated individuals.”
In addition to his regular school board duties, Hackett also has served as the Harwood school board’s representative to the Central Vermont Career Center School Board. At last week’s Harwood board organizational meeting, Hackett said he hoped another board member might take on the career center role for this year. Filling that spot is an item on the board’s agenda for tonight.
In an email to the Waterbury Roundabout, Hackett said he has enjoyed his time on the board and he plans to continue to follow its work. “I’ll still be engaged and watching on Zoom,” he said. “I'm hopeful that someone else from the community will step in and fill the seat soon.”
Filling a vacancy in between local elections involves the school board seeking applicants from the town the position represents. Interested individuals are asked to send a letter of interest to the board chair and superintendent.
The board also shares the applications with the selectboard in the town, giving the local board a chance to make a recommendation on the school board appointment representing their community. The appointment would run until the next local election, which would be in March 2027. At that time, the appointee could run for election.
The board likely will discuss the Waterbury opening tonight and schedule a deadline for application letters and an upcoming meeting where it would fill the position.
Board re-elects chair, vice chair
At its organizational meeting last week, the board chose officers for the coming year, re-electing Warren representative Ashley Woods as chair and Duxbury member Cindy Senning as vice chair.
Other officers chosen were: Langford Davidson of Fayston as finance officer, Emily Dolloff of Duxbury as assistant finance officer, Carol Chamberlain as recording secretary, and Waterbury member Pam Eaton to the district’s School Health Advisory Board.
The board tabled appointing someone to the Central Vermont Career Center Board after Hackett said he did not wish to be reappointed.
The board approved naming each school principal as truant officers for the year. It also named The Valley Reporter, the Waterbury Roundabout and the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus as its newspapers of record for publishing formal school district notices.
Several board members acknowledged that having multiple local news outlets covering local school news is an advantage for the communities in the Harwood district.
Superintendent Mike Leichliter agreed, adding, “They do their job and keep us accountable and ask hard questions, and I think that's also extremely important of any school district or other governmental agency.”
Looking ahead to this week’s meeting, the school board noted that it would look to reauthorize several standing committees, such as the Public Outreach Committee and the Building Use and Visioning Committee. The board also briefly discussed potentially forming a new committee aimed at advocacy efforts at the state level to address various issues around public education reform being debated in Montpelier among lawmakers and Gov. Phil Scott’s administration.
Warren member Macon Phillips, who joined the board in February, said he supported the board being active on advocating to state lawmakers and policymakers. “The governor and our elected representatives have failed our kids, full stop,” he said, noting that major change is unlikely in an election year.
Phillips said school leaders need to better communicate their ideas and needs to their elected leaders with whom he said he was “incredibly unimpressed” when state senators and representatives have attended recent board meetings.
“I would like to invite them again, but ask them to come with ideas about what we can get behind to help them, rather than an overview of all of the medicine we need to take from the governor,” he said. “We cannot have education reform simply be about cutting costs for the governor's political future, and I haven't heard anything other than that from our elected representatives. We have a responsibility as a board to understand what ideas we need to put forward and to fight like hell to get them done instead of telling us why nothing's going to work and we need to manage the decline of our state. Our kids matter too much.”
Woods replied, “I love that fire. I mean there’s no reason we aren’t that board,” she said. “This is a hard place. It’s like yelling into the void. That’s how it feels because it feels like we’re being ignored. So, thank you.”
At his first board meeting, newly elected Fayston member Karl Naden said he feels much discussion around education reform has focused on negative impacts. Naden asked about spending time to focus on positive possibilities.
“What is our vision for a positive vision, an achievable vision, for what schools are going to look like in the next three, five, 10 years?” he asked. “We haven’t, at least in my experience so far, seemed to be talking about what are the positive things that we'd like to see. How can we think about – knowing that changes are going to come – asserting some kind of positive vision that will have at least some impact in kind of controlling our destiny as some of those changes come down the pike?”
Woods thanked the board members for their support of advocacy around the statewide education issues. “We are all in agreement that change needs to happen. I mean, there’s no doubt that we can’t carry on as we are tax-wise. And we do need to act locally in our own district to figure out what we’re doing,” she said. “That’s our main focus here.”
Parent raises tech concern
During the March 11 meeting’s public comment time, the board heard from Duxbury resident Jonathan Wilson, who said he is a parent of a 2-year-old, but he’s already looking ahead to his child entering preschool and beyond.
Wilson said he had recently learned of a practice at Brookside Primary School of using an internet application called GoNoodle that he said Principal Chris Neville explained is used as “in his words, a reward for students, and also to help with transitions,” Wilson recounted.
Wilson said he’s researched the app, describing it as using “branded content” from popular sources such as Disney, Lucasfilm, Nickelodeon, and more. He said the company’s messaging describes how the app can help “build early fandom” and “drive future sales” from the youth market.
“I was kind of shocked, actually, that that's something that we’ve adopted,” he said, noting how the Harwood district has adopted a strict policy at Harwood Middle/High School banning the use of cellphones during the school day. “Why are we giving branded Nickelodeon Nintendo Switch content to, like third graders, if we don’t want them, you know, to kind of be like mindless scrolling zombies as they get older?” he asked.
Woods noted that the board typically does not engage in discussion during public comment, but the time can raise issues that the board can take up at a later meeting time. Leichliter added that the administrators could also provide more information for that discussion. The board did not specify when it would bring the issue up. “This is something that – I’m looking around at concerned faces – and I have a feeling we’re going to talk about this,” Woods told Wilson.
Foundation funds San Diego field trip
Among other items at last week’s meeting, the board unanimously approved a field trip request from Harwood Union High School teachers Matt Henchen and Jonah Ibson to visit High Tech High School in San Diego, California, March 18-23.
The trip includes a total of nine teachers and staff and two students – a junior and a senior – for a total cost of $26,000. None of the funds were to come from the school district, the proposal noted. It would be paid with funds from a grant that Henchen and Ibson received for this year from the Rowland Foundation Fellowship, which they are conducting this school year. The trip request describes the school’s program of “world-renowned project-based learning” with an emphasis on a hands-on, collaborative structure.
The Harwood School Board meets tonight at 6 p.m. in the Harwood library and online via Zoom (allowing participation) and streamed and posted on the district’s YouTube webpage. More details and links are in the meeting agenda.