Will Senning, elections director for the Vermont secretary of state’s office, reported this week that after further research, he feels it was inappropriate for Rosemarie White, one of Warren’s representatives to the Harwood Unified Union School District (HUUSD) Board, to have moved the sign of another school board candidate, seeking a Waitsfield seat on that board.
At Town Meeting Day on March 3, White was filmed removing a sign for write-in candidate Russ Bennett who was running as a write-in candidate seeking Christine Sullivan’s seat on the HUUSD Board.
At the time White said she felt she was helping to enforce building principal Kaiya Korb’s preferences for no political signs at the school. She said she stopped of her own volition rather than at the behest of Korb. Korb affirmed policy of disallowing political signs at the school.
Contacted the day after Town Meeting, Senning initially said that Waitsfield town clerk Jennifer Peterson had the ultimate authority of signage at the polling place. Subsequent to that conversation, Senning reached back out to The Valley Reporter and said that after further review, because White was neither a staff member of the school implementing the principal’s policy nor a Waitsfield election official, her behavior was inappropriate.
White said she planned to apologize to the public and the board at this week’s school board meeting.
“I made a mistake. I should have called Kaiya,” White said.
She said it was a thoughtful, respectful conversation that she had with a Fayston resident over the weekend that helped her remove the emotion from that day and her actions and see more clearly.
