To the editor,
On behalf of the Harwood Unified Union School District Board, we would like to thank the citizens of Duxbury, Fayston, Moretown, Waitsfield, Warren and Waterbury for your support of our first budget. This positive vote allows us to turn our gaze to the future of education in our district in a fiscally responsible way.
In June 2016, all of our towns voted to merge in response to Act 46. Fourteen of us were elected to represent six towns and seven schools on the newly designed unified board. We have engaged in important and difficult conversations over the past seven months as we prepare to assume governance of all of our schools when we become a fully operational district on July 1, 2017.
Your support has helped us develop an intradistrict choice policy, create a healthy maintenance reserve fund for all of our buildings, fill in the gaps in our K-12 science curriculum, make allowances for negotiated teacher and staff contracts, invest in facilities personnel and provide a bus route for tuition students from Granville and Hancock. Additionally, we were able to lower the tax rate in five of our six towns, thanks in large part to the Act 46 accelerated merger incentives.
We meet twice-monthly in the Harwood library and we welcome your attendance, input and feedback. Upcoming agendas will feature discussion on the creation of a board vision and information about the district Action Plan, proficiency-based grading, pre-K programs, community engagement circles and foreign language instruction, to name a few items.
Again, thank you very much for your support of our work, our schools and our children.
The HUUSD Communications Working Group: Peter Langella, Maureen McCracken, Heidi Spear and Rob Williams on behalf of the HUUSD Board.
