School board aims to fill two seats tonight; drafts letter to state lawmakers
February 11, 2026 | By Lisa Scagliotti With two vacant seats at the table, the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board will interview applicants tonight to appoint new members, and each of the candidates is interested in running for election to remain on the board after Town Meeting Day.
The 14-member board currently has two openings after members Rebecca Baruzzi and Jonathan Young from Fayston and Warren, respectively, stepped down in December and January.
The positions are two of nine board seats that will be up for voters to fill on Town Meeting Day. But, unlike the other seats where terms are ending on March 3, these positions are currently vacant and the board may appoint new members to serve in those roles now until election day.
The board has received applications from three individuals interested in the openings. Board Chair Ashley Woods said they all have expressed interest in running for election to the positions, too.
The board has two applicants for the Warren opening and one for the Fayston seat: Warren residents Macon Phillips and Tristan Whitehouse, and Susanne Lowen from Fayston. Each candidate’s letter of interest is posted on the agenda for tonight’s meeting.
A parent of students at Warren Elementary and Harwood Middle schools, Phillips is a member of the Warren Planning Commission, a role he said he would forego should he become a school board member. In his application, he shares his career history that began in Vermont two decades ago through the AmeriCorps program. He continued in the public sector, working in digital communications in Washington, D.C., eventually in the White House in the administration of President Barack Obama, and at the U.S. State Department. He presently runs a consulting firm based in Waterbury, working with nonprofits and advocacy organizations.
Also interested in the Warren seat is Whitehouse, a history teacher at Northfield Middle/High School. In his application, Whitehouse details how his daily experience as a classroom teacher can inform his service on the school board in his home community. A UVM graduate, Whitehouse moved to Vermont in 2019 after teaching at the Landmark School in Beverly, Massachusetts, a private boarding school that serves students in grades 2-12 with learning disabilities, particularly dyslexia.
In her application letter, Lowen shares that she moved to Fayston in 2022 and is retired from a career in the labor movement where she worked extensively as a freelance writer and editor. She has volunteered with the Everybody Wins! student mentoring program and is involved in a variety of environmental, recreational and social justice organizations and projects.
The school board has time on tonight’s agenda devoted to interviewing the candidates and then may make appointments. Board Vice Chair Cindy Senning, who is a Justice of the Peace in Duxbury, can even administer their oaths so the appointees may join and fully participate in tonight’s meeting as voting members.
The board has two regular meetings – tonight and next Wednesday, Feb. 18 – before the Town Meeting Day election. To continue in their appointed seats, the new members – or anyone else interested in the positions – would need to run as write-in candidates on Town Meeting Day because ballots have already been printed.
March 3 election recap
To recap the upcoming Town Meeting Day election as it relates to the Harwood School Board: Nine positions will be on ballots around the district in the upcoming election.
Duxbury: Both board members are running for election – Cindy Senning, who has been on the board since 2021, and Emily Dolloff who was appointed in 2025. Senning is running for re-election to a full three-year term; Dolloff is running for the remaining two years on her term.
Fayston: Board member Langford Davidson, who was appointed in November to fill a vacancy, has filed to run for a full three-year term. No one has filed to run for Fayston’s other seat, however Lowen has expressed interest in running should she be appointed tonight.
Moretown: No one has filed or announced a write-in bid for the seat held by board member Ben Clark, who is not running for re-election.
Waitsfield: Board member J. B. Weir is running for re-election to another full-three year term.
Warren: No one has filed to run for Warren’s open seat. However, both Whitehouse and Phillips have said they would like to run for election if they were to be appointed tonight.
Waterbury: Two of Waterbury’s four board seats are up for election. First appointed in 2025, member Pamela Eaton is running for a full three-year term. Former board member Michael Frank has announced he will be a write-in candidate for the remaining one year on an unexpired term.
An appeal to state lawmakers
Also on tonight’s agenda, the school board will hear a report from district administrators on chronic student absenteeism trends in Vermont and in the Harwood district.
And the school board will discuss a letter drafted to share with members of the Vermont House and Senate representing the communities in the Harwood school district. It particularly calls attention to two cost drivers in education spending and asks lawmakers to advocate for the state legislature to revise its formula for calculating school districts’ per-pupil spending.
It specifically asks that the per-pupil cost formula no longer include districts’ debt tied to school maintenance and construction or increases to health insurance costs for school staff. Currently, both of those costs count toward the per-pupil spending calculation, for which there is a threshold with a penalty for districts that exceed it.
The draft letter states: “When districts seek voter approval to repair aging roofs, replace failing HVAC systems, or address safety and security upgrades, the resulting bond payments are folded directly into operating budgets and counted toward per pupil thresholds. Health care costs, negotiated at the state level, continue to rise at rates well beyond local control. These two cost drivers alone can push a district toward financial penalties even when boards are exercising restraint and making difficult reductions…. Districts should not be penalized for maintaining safe facilities or providing health coverage required by collective bargaining agreements shaped at the state level.”
The letter also calls on lawmakers to support restoring a state contribution to school construction projects, something that ended in 2007, leaving districts to fully fund building upgrades and maintenance projects. Cost estimates for deferred maintenance and upgrades to Harwood school facilities currently exceed $100 million.
The appeal comes as lawmakers in Montpelier are working on a proposal to realign and consolidate school districts with a goal of operating fewer schools in the future to curb education spending.
“Our request is straightforward. Remove unavoidable debt and health care costs from the excess spending formula and restore a credible state role in school construction funding,” the Harwood board’s draft letter states. “These changes would allow districts like ours to act responsibly without being trapped by structural penalties beyond our control.”
The letter would be sent to the district’s four Democratic Vermont House members: Dara Torre, Tom Stevens, Candice White and Theresa Wood, as well as Washington County’s three state Senators, Democrat Ann Cummings, and Democrat/Progressives Andrew Perchlik and Anne Watson.
Tonight’s meeting begins at 6 p.m. in the Harwood library. It also will be live-streamed on Zoom for viewers to participate, and on the district’s YouTube channel. Find the agenda and livestream links online here.