Editorial: Two boards too weak to make the right decisions

By Cynthia Prairie
©2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Over the past two weeks, both the Chester Select Board and the board of directors of the Green Mountain Unified School District could not have come across as weaker, more spineless.

Under the mistaken guise of avoiding a political morass, they each punted their responsibilities:

• in the case of the Select Board to make a recommendation to the school board to fill the soon-to-be-vacant seat of Chester rep Tuck Wunderle and
• in the case of the school board to vote on the two candidates that presented during last Thursday’s board meeting.

Both boards seem to have given more weight to the cacophony on Facebook, declaring the entire situation emotionally fraught or  “political,” rather than stepping back and delving into the substance of the charges against one of the candidates for the school board seat.

It is an easy trap to fall into. Social media is a cesspool of screamers, a tabloid for trolls. But what do responsible people do when confronted with an important issue and dubious claims on social media? They fact-check. If members of both boards had taken the time to read police and court documents related to one candidate — John Keller — they should have come away believing that they did indeed need to address the situation with their votes instead of running from it. I would hope that neither board was downplaying the assault, which happened just last August, simply because the word “domestic” is in front of it.

At this point I will give a shoutout to Select Board member Arne Jonynas, currently its vice chair who has also served as its chair, as well as on Chester school boards. He saw through the political harping on both sides and was a vocal advocate for bringing the issue to the forefront.

“The issue” was an assault that occurred last summer in Chester and continued in Rockingham. Police removed the victim from the home and confiscated weapons. Keller did plead guilty to domestic assault — just this May — and was given probation with a lengthy set of conditions. At this point, we wish the best for his victim and hope that the help that Keller receives sticks. However, he still remains unqualified for the position, even more so when compared to the other candidate, Penny Benelli, a former educator who recently retired from practicing family law locally.

The excuse the Select Board gave in ignoring its duty was that the school board was better equipped at knowing who would best serve on the school board. And some reference was made to the school board’s recent action ignoring the Cavendish Select Board’s recommendation, which was an astoundingly poor move by the school board. (The Cavendish Select Board and school board members are elected to represent the people of Cavendish. But in this instance, it was the representatives of Andover and Chester who decided who would represent Cavendish on the school board, shutting out Cavendish members of both boards.)

Worse than the Select Board abrogating its responsibility by sending the two candidates names to the school board as if they were equally weighted was the school board’s seeming ignorance of both state law governing naming a replacement and of the Open Meeting Law governing reasons for conducting an executive session. The school board also seems to be under the impression that it is more important to protect its board members from controversy than to protect the their students’ education by appointing an eminently qualified member.

Also dubious is the GM board’s decision to invite the Chester Select Board to meet to set up  a special election, which must be overseen by the Town Clerk and other town employees, a expense that can be avoided simply by the school board doing its duty and filling the vacancy.

Shawn Cunningham’s article from Tuesday outlines exactly what the Open Meeting Law requires and what the state requires of school board’s when filling vacancies — they shall do it.  Please read that article closely.

We also urge that:

• school board members go back to basics and address properly the issues surrounding Open Meeting/executive sessions and filling vacancies.
• the school board adopt a policy of local courtesy to the pertinent select boards’ wishes and the adjacent school board members.
• And finally we urge both boards to steel themselves to address these most difficult issues, not only today, but for the future. They need to understand social media much more deeply than they do and they need to put its worst and all-too-frequent toxicity in its place.