Every institution has a front of house and a back of house.
Out front, everything is polished. The language is warm. The mission statement is framed where everyone can see it. Harwood School District calls itself “student-centered” and promises to “partner with our community.” Fine words. Comforting words. But in the back of house, policies and projections become decisions about our children.
You can learn a lot about what an institution is made of when someone sends the order back. Our family did that this summer.
Our five-year-old son spent two successful years at Fayston Pre-K. He has an Individualized Education Program, or IEP. He knew the teachers, specialists, routines, and children around him. He was thriving. Then Superintendent Dr. Mike Leichliter denied our request for him to remain there. Our son would instead attend our resident school, Warren Elementary. The reasons were enrollment, class size, and operational concerns—all legitimate things for a district to consider.
But here was our question: Why move a five-year-old little boy away from the school where he was already succeeding? We were not demanding that every family receive its preferred assignment. We asked district leaders to consider our son as an individual—his progress, the value of continuity, and whether removing him from a successful environment could cause harm.
The answer was blunt: the district—not his IEP team—had the authority to choose his school. That was when this stopped being only a disagreement about kindergarten.
Maybe we were wrong. An honest process should have allowed either side to be persuaded. We requested reconsideration, submitted evidence, and asked our son’s full team to examine the decision. We requested state-led mediation. The district declined without warning or explanation.
So we appealed to the school board and chair Ashley Woods, My wife and I were each given three minutes to speak. Then the board entered executive session. We waited outside for an hour, unable to hear its reasoning or answer questions. The board emerged and upheld Dr. Leichliter’s decision.
As Woods left, we tried to speak with her. “We can’t talk to you right now,” we were told. Months of meetings, evidence, appeals, and requests for help ended with a closed door and a departing sentence. We felt ignored, alone, and condescended to.
We expected engagement, difficult questions, and some sign that our elected representatives were independently examining the administration’s decision.
The district decided first and listened afterward.
Our son is excited to begin kindergarten at Warren. His educators deserve our respect and support; they did not create this dispute.
This is about those who make the decisions—and the system that protects those decisions from meaningful challenge.
The district may have possessed the authority to assign our son to Warren. But authority and leadership are not the same thing. Authority tells you who gets to decide. Leadership explains why the decision is right for the child. Authority permits parents to speak. Leadership listens while the outcome can still change. Authority is comfortable behind policy, procedure, and a closed door. Leadership steps into the open, answers difficult questions, and accepts responsibility.
School board members are elected to represent the public, challenge the administration when necessary, and ensure that power is exercised responsibly. A board should be the public’s watchdog, not the administration’s shield.
As an educator, I know “student-centered” is easy to print in a mission statement. What we saw behind that language was familiar: the administration decided, the board affirmed, and the family received enough process to say it had participated.
One family’s experience does not explain every HUUSD decision. But it shows how the machinery can operate when challenged. That should concern every parent, educator, taxpayer, and neighbor in this district. If this is how HUUSD handles one five-year-old’s assignment, how will it handle disagreements over staffing, transportation, programs, budgets, or entire schools?
As the district considers decisions as consequential as school closures, communities need more than public meetings and managed comment periods. They need confidence that the important questions have not already been answered somewhere outside the room.
Every institution looks good from the front of house. The public has a right to see what happens in the kitchen.
We can build a district where authority comes with accountability, participation happens before decisions become final, and families remain partners even when leaders disagree with them. That requires parents, educators, taxpayers, and neighbors to show up, ask uncomfortable questions, reject empty slogans, and insist on a school obard that remembers whom it represents.
Our district belongs to the communities it serves. Its leadership should act like it.
Whitehouse and his family live in Warren.
You might also like
