News Analysis: More questions than answers to fill a school board seat

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

The board of the Green Mountain Unified School District has a long history of tackling difficult issues but not resolving them in a timely manner: the on again-off again discussion with the school’s former mascot being the most recent example, until last Thursday night.

The board went into its meeting with the job of  deciding – between two candidates – who will take the place of resigning Chester representative Tuckerman Wunderle. But in an executive session lasting 75 minutes it decided not to decide and crafted a statement that is intended to kick the situation back to the town for a special election. The Chester Select Board at its May 7 meeting also decided not to give either candidate its recommendation.

And along the way it appears that the board may have either violated or ignored several state statutes including the Open Meeting Law.

Board Chair Adrienne Williams started by acknowledging “there was a lot of angst surrounding this meeting” but reminded everyone that the meeting was to conduct school board business and that “decorum will be maintained.” She explained that after the candidates – John Keller and Penny Benelli – gave brief statements the board would interview each of them separately in executive session, then deliberate in executive session.

At several times and in several ways Williams said that the board had been through “long periods of discord” and she was trying to “protect” and “insulate” the board from the negativity of what was being said about the current situation in the public. In early May, Keller plead guilty to domestic assault for an incident that occurred last summer. He is currently on probation for 12 months.

Members discussed the recent interview process for filling a vacancy from Cavendish and the need for consistency in the way the board acts. Board member Lisa Sanders of Cavendish said she was uncomfortable with going into executive session based on an trying to avoid an  uncomfortable dynamic and public conflict. She wondered if doing the interviews behind closed doors for those reasons meets the requirements of the Open Meeting Law.

Williams said she did not want to put the board or the two candidates in a position where something they ask or say could be misconstrued or that the public could interrupt. However, she added that the board could decide how it wanted to proceed. The board then decided to do the interviews in public one candidate at a time while the other left the room.

But before the interviews could take place, the board then voted to go into executive session to lay out the ground rules of conducting the interview in the public session. That reasoning is a questionable use of the open meeting law’s exemption for an executive session.

While the board had every right to go into executive session for the interviews and deliberation, the idea of shielding the ground rules from public knowledge appeared to be connected with the desire to insulate the board and the candidates from an uncomfortable situation, which is not the purpose of the exemption that reads:

“The appointment, employment, or evaluation of a public officer or employee, provided that a public body must make the final hiring or appointment decision, and explain its reasons for the decision, in open meeting. 1 V.S.A. § 313(a)(3).”

The Interviews, the deliberation and the ‘decision’

The board then conducted interviews with each candidate in an open forum while the other candidate left the room.  Each board member asked roughly the same question of each candidate and then the board went – properly – into executive session. During the deliberative session candidates, members of the public and school employees cooled their heels in the hallway or in a class room from 7:20 to 8:35 p.m. although Superintendent Layne Millington was called into the session twice to provide technical assistance.

When the board came out of the executive session, Wunderle read the following:

“Due to the politicized nature of the proceedings leading up to this meeting and due to the nature of this board as an apolitical entity, the board will invite the Chester Select Board to a meeting to ask them to conduct a duly warned public election. We thank both of the candidates for their time and interest in serving on the board.”

This result raises a couple of questions.

First, did the board violate state law by not appointing within the statutory timeframe?

Under Vermont law (16 VSA 731) the board has five days to tell the town of the vacancy and within 30 days (after consultation with a town’s select board) the board “shall appoint an eligible person to fill the vacancy…” The word shall in the law does not seem give the board the leeway to send it on to the town for an election.  The law says much the same thing in 16 VSA 424 for town school boards that “shall, by majority vote of those present and voting, appoint a qualified person to fill a vacancy in the town school board…”

It’s notable that section 731 refers to the appointment of an eligible person while section 424 says qualified a qualified person. It would appear that the former is more to the point since it refers to the the type of governance the district has since Act 46 with proportional representation from member towns. The latter appears to be older and referring to town school boards which each town had before the merger.  Section 731 also recognizes that anyone who can get elected can be a school board member regardless of their qualifications.

And while the Chester Select Board decided not to recommend either candidate at its Wednesday, May 7 meeting, that can’t be a stumbling block for the school board since just a couple of months ago it rejected the recommendation of the Cavendish Select Board and appointed a second candidate.

As to the school board asking the town to hold a special election, Chester Town Clerk Amie Record told The Telegraph on Monday that town attorney Jim Carroll has been asked to look into the district’s request. She was not certain when the town would hear back from him.

The law does not spell out penalties breaking it, but that is not the same as not breaking the law.

Second, did the board violate the Open Meeting Law by deciding not to act while still in its executive session and creating a statement that explains that decision? The law states: “No formal or binding action shall be taken in executive session except for actions relating to the securing of real estate options…” and final action must be taken by a vote in a public session. But the decision to not take action is, in its own way, a decision taken while behind closed doors.

Third, and somewhat peculiarly, did a vacancy exist on the board at the time of the meeting? This could be splitting hairs, but as Tuck Wunderle’s resignation was the cause of the situation and strangely enough he was the board member who read the board’s statement, it’s not an entirely silly question.

Wunderle said at the April 17 meeting that he would be going off to accept a graduate fellowship but would stay through the May meeting thus creating a vacancy as of May 16, which would give the school board an opportunity for a “do over.”