To the editor: Chester school board hopefuls claim to be nonpolitical; don’t believe them
The Chester Telegraph | Mar 02, 2026 | Comments 0
I cannot cast a vote for Chester’s representatives to the GMUSD school board, yet Chester votes have an outsized impact on the schools and towns in our district. In turn, your decisions impact the social and economic development well-being of Cavendish, Baltimore and Andover.
Chester school board members will tell you that they have everyone’s interest at heart, and that there are no “politics” to their decisions. Yet twice they turned down qualified candidates from Cavendish and Chester because they disagreed with their beliefs and worried that they’d lose the majority. They will tell you that refusing to admit their violations of the Open Meeting Law is not political.
They haven’t bothered to tell you (and neither did the superintendent) that one of our districts’ schools — Cavendish Town Elementary School — has been recognized twice now for excellence: Third in Vermont by US News and World Report and by the Vermont Agency of Education as School With a Rating of Exceeding in Mathematics Based on SY2024-2025 Data.
You can abstain from voting for the remaining candidate in the Miles/Bailey race. That would at least be a rejection of the dirty politics played by Chester-based conservatives to vilify the wife of a candidate for her private, consensual behavior. You can abstain from voting for candidates in the Ucci-Hance-Benelli race that have consistently shown disregard for basic humanity, and who while claiming to be fiscal conservatives, preferred to spend money to build at Chester-Andover Elementary School rather than invite families to explore the highly rated neighbor school in Cavendish.
Don’t give candidates you don’t support your vote just because they are on the ballot, lest they use your vote to claim a mandate they do not actually have.
Sincerely,
Sara Stowell
Proctorsville
Filed Under: Commentary • Letters to the Editor
Comments (0)
Leave a Reply
Editor's Note: Due to the recent repeated comments from some readers, including those using aliases, which is against our stated policy, we will be closing comments after an article has been up for eight days. We will allow one comment per reader per article. As always, first name or initial and last name required. COMMENTS WILL BE DELETED WITHOUT THEM. Again, no aliases accepted.