November 6, 2026 | By Lisa Scagliotti Looking ahead to the 2027-28 school budget, the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board this week took a first step toward running two fewer schools next fall, proposing to close elementary schools in Waitsfield and Fayston.
That call was made in a straw poll at Wednesday’s board meeting with close to 200 members of the public in attendance, counting about 50 in person and about 150 more watching livestreams.
The vote is not a final decision, which will come after a process involving multiple public hearings in the coming weeks. The move also prompted the board’s two Waitsfield members on Thursday to call for the board to reconsider the choice.
The Harwood Unified Union School District School Board meets on Nov. 4 with an audience of about 50 in the Harwood library and about another 150 watching online. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
The district currently has seven schools: Harwood Middle/High School, elementary schools in Fayston, Moretown, Waterbury, Waitsfield and Warren, and Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury.
As the school year opened, administrators presented a grim budget scenario that the district faces looking ahead to the 2027-28 budget that voters will consider on Town Meeting Day. That needs to be completed by late January to go on the local election ballots for a March vote.
New state parameters have created tighter education spending rules, which could mean costly penalties for school districts whose per-pupil spending exceeds state guidelines. Harwood school leaders are wrestling with the decisions needed to keep next year’s spending under the state’s threshold that would trigger a penalty.
Preliminary calculations have shown that the district could face a penalty of about $2.5 million if the 2027-28 budget offers the same level of programs as is currently in place. That calculation envisions a budget of about $55 million, up from this year’s nearly $52 million.
Administrators have suggested the board consider two approaches: making deep cuts to school operations while continuing to run seven schools, or closing two schools.
Finance Director Lisa Estler has outlined how the first alternative would require the most dramatic programming cuts to date, such as ending virtually all school bus transportation, eliminating preschool, and deep cuts to athletics and behavioral support staff.
The school board has leaned toward the second option, and Estler has shown that reducing two schools could be done without any major construction and with a bottom line under the state penalty threshold. Her scenario lays out combining pre-kindergarten through fourth grade from the closed schools into the two remaining valley schools. Meanwhile, the valley schools’ fifth and sixth graders could join Waterbury and Duxbury peers at Crossett Brook Middle School. In turn, Crossett Brook seventh and eighth graders would shift to Harwood.
In October, the school board expressed support for the consolidation approach but did not choose which valley schools to close. To help with that decision, Estler gave the school board “homework” last week. She created one-page school profiles with key details such as enrollment data, staffing figures, and information on facility condition and needed maintenance. Using a worksheet with six two-school combinations representing options for pairs to keep open, Estler asked board members to score the choices. She then put their feedback into a slide presentation used this week.
The board’s top-ranked combination of schools to remain open was Waitsfield and Warren with a score of 248 points; the second option with 241 points was Moretown and Warren; third with 223 points was Moretown and Waitsfield.
Comments carry weight
A lengthy discussion took place at Wednesday's meeting along with a presentation from district administrators who evaluated the four schools based on their classroom capacities and enrollment.
But before board members waded into discussing the data, they devoted an hour to public comments. As has been the case at nearly every school board meeting this school year, most of those asking to speak were Moretown residents, many of whom are parents of current elementary students. They voiced support for their school, pointing to its physical setting and its offerings, including a nature education program.
Former school board member and frequent board attendee Peter Langella pointed out that Moretown is the only elementary school in the district without declining enrollment. The latest data shows it had 121 K-6 students in October 2024; that grew to 137 in 2025 and remains the same this year. The other elementary enrollments this year are 87 each in Fayston and Warren, 103 in Waitsfield, all of which are K-6; and 284 at K-4 at Waterbury’s Brookside Primary.
Langella also argued for more information. “Many of our schools have roots stretching back more than a century. Decisions you make now could shape where and how our children learn into the 22nd century,” he said. “This is not hyperbole or an exaggeration. These are multi-generational decisions. And in all of these meetings, I still have not heard nearly enough about our children, their development, their belonging, their relationships, and what they might lose if you get this wrong.”
Morgan Tewksbury called the school “the heart of our town” and asked the board to consider other options to closures that might involve Moretown Elementary. “No one wants their town school closed, but this is all we have here in Moretown,” she said.
Public comment ended with 11-year-old Moretown Elementary student Nori Mohr, who was watching with her dad via Zoom. “I think we should keep this Moretown school open because the kids are thriving, the staff is amazing, and our community of this village is very, very beautiful and I think it would be a shame to lose all that,” she said.
Straw poll
After discussing a variety of variables, some board members asked if administrators might return next week with more information. Estler and Superintendent Mike Leichliter stressed the importance for the board to choose a direction soon in order to proceed with drafting the 2027-28 budget.
“I need to have an idea of what schools are going to stay open. I can’t wait until later on down the road,” Estler said. “We have to have that budget ready by mid-January.”
The prompting led board Chair Ashley Woods to call for a straw vote to indicate which pair of schools to remain open next year. Nine members chose the second-ranked Moretown and Warren. Four members – JB Weir and Alexina Cather of Waitsfield, Cindy Senning of Duxbury, and Pam Eaton of Waterbury – chose top-ranked Waitsfield and Warren. The only agreement was on closing Fayston Elementary.
Some commented on their choice of Moretown over Waitsfield, noting its setting and role in the community. Moretown board member Steve Rosenberg urged board members to visit Moretown School. “I think it's a really special place, particularly with the eco program,” he said.
Fellow Moretown member Caitlin Lovegrove argued for considering public participation. “It's valid that of the 112 people who've come to meetings since the beginning, the vast majority have been members of Moretown. And of the people who’ve spoken at the meeting, 70% of people here have been members of Moretown,” she said. “That community has shown up and has made their voices heard loud and clear. And it’s not to say that other communities don’t have great communities, but the ones who have made the most noise I think is a valuable thing to consider when we're taking this straw poll.”
Waitsfield member Cather said she’s urged Waitsfield residents to do the opposite. “I will take responsibility for more Waitsfield parents not getting up here because I have been echoing [that] we need to preserve our education even if that means closing our school,” she said. “I want to be really clear that there would be a lot more Waitsfield parents here probably saying loud things if they weren't respecting the administration and our teachers and believing that the whole district education has to be the priority.”
Waterbury board member Theo Hanna suggested that the group try to think about all of the district’s towns collectively as their town. “I really think this requires a mindset shift,” she said.
Weir made a final practical pitch for retaining Waitsfield Elementary that didn’t change any minds: “Just to remind the board … we did spend $1.1 million on a kitchen three years ago at a school that is in the commercial center of the entire valley. So, there's an element of serious economic waste to that.”
Seeing the 9-4 margin, Woods opted not to vote. “I’m going to be neutral,” she said.
The day after: A call to reconsider
The Wednesday night vote prompted the board’s two Waitsfield members on Thursday to write to the full board with a request to revisit the choice. Weir and Cather shared their letter with the community on Front Porch Forum and with local news outlets. In it, they thank their peers and acknowledge the difficulty of the decisions before the board. “None of us joined this board hoping to close a school,” they write.
They then recount the scoring exercise that they all took part in to determine which two the district should keep open next year. They note that the Waitsfield-Warren combination got the best score, yet the majority of the board opted for the Moretown-Warren pairing.
They disagreed with board members who said they took into account public participation in making their choice. “A decision of this size cannot turn on which community is best able to fill the room. If it does, we are no longer asking what is best for every HUUSD student. We are asking who was loudest,” they wrote, adding that “attendance does not measure love.”
They also took issue with those who said they factored in the impact of closing a school on the larger community. “We understand that, and we feel for a community that sees its school as its center. But that is not a measure of which configuration gives HUUSD students the best education, and it was not one of the criteria we agreed to score,” they said.
The decision to close schools should be based on what’s best for the whole district, they continued, adding, “That is not what happened last night.”
The Waitsfield board members asked that the full board revisit the decision after a public meeting takes place on Monday night in Waitsfield. They’d like to take another look at the scoring and have board members weigh in on whether revisions are needed. And finally, they asked the board to “weigh public comment for what it tells us (new facts, impacts we had not considered), not for how passionate it is.”
On the horizon
In addition to working on next year’s budget, the Harwood board is simultaneously looking at longer-term planning that could eventually shrink the district’s footprint even further to just three schools – Harwood, Crossett Brook, and one combined elementary school in the Mad River Valley.
The commercial property in Waitsfield now used by Cabot Creamery as its corporate headquarters has emerged as a potential location for the combined valley elementary school since the company put it up for sale earlier this year. The school board recently received five bids from architectural firms to evaluate the property to determine its suitability as a future school and the potential associated costs. The bids range from about $140,000 to $190,000. The school board’s building committee on Monday said it needed to go over the proposals before it could recommend a choice.
Waitsfield Principal Kaiya Korb (seated center) reads the principals’ letter to the board. Standing are principals from all of the district’s schools. Left: Jen Durren, Kate Liptak, Justine Boyden, Sarah Schoolcraft; right: Meg McDonough, Chris Neville, Jess Deane and Sam Krotinger. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Principals weigh in
Also looking beyond the year ahead are the school district’s principals, who weighed in at this week’s board meeting with a letter to the board in which they share their vision for how classes should be aligned in the district’s schools in the future. Nine of the 10 administrators attended the meeting and stood alongside Waitsfield Principal Kaiya Korb who read the letter in full.
“As the administrative leaders responsible for the daily educational experiences, safety, and growth of students across Harwood Unified Union School District, we are writing to express our collective and unequivocal support for a district-wide configuration of Pre-K–4th grades, 5th–6th grades, and 7th–12th grades,” the letter begins. “We believe this configuration best positions HUUSD to provide rigorous, consistent, sustainable educational experiences for all students, now and in the years ahead.”
The principals said that they “remain neutral on the specific facility decisions under consideration by the board” but that their grade groupings across all of the district would offer consistent experiences for students and more opportunities.
(Read the letter in full here.)
Next steps: Public meetings
Multiple meetings lie ahead for the Harwood board and community to decide the school closure question. The district’s process calls for holding three public hearings, including in the communities where schools slated for closure are located. A minimum of two-thirds of the 14-member board’s weighted votes are needed for the decision to pass. There is no public vote required.
The board’s weighted system of voting is based on the populations of the member towns. The voting weights vary by town from a low of 5% for the Fayston members to 9.75% for the Waterbury members. Each town has two members on the board except for Waterbury, which –with the largest population – has four board members.
Before the formal hearings take place, the school board’s outreach committee is continuing a series of informal public meetings about the school budget and consolidation. The next meeting is Monday, Nov. 9, at Waitsfield Elementary School at 5:30 p.m., followed by a Waterbury/Duxbury meeting on Thursday, Nov. 12, at Crossett Brook Middle School at 6 p.m., and at Warren Elementary School on Monday, Nov. 16, at 6 p.m.
See more information online on the HUUSD.org website, including budget slide presentations from Finance Director Lisa Estler. A background presentation titled “State of Our Schools” prepared by the School Board’s Outreach Committee.