As a resident of the Mad River Valley, I feel called to respond to Tristan Whitehouse’s My View “School district belongs to the community,” published in the Valley Reporter on Sept. 3, 2026. While I am a current member of the Harwood Union Unified School District (HUUSD) board, I am not speaking in that role but instead as a community member who wants to see our schools and communities thrive.
By my reading, in your letter, you
- Express your disappointment with a specific decision made by the district and affirmed by the HUUSD board with respect to your son’s schooling, and
- Claim that in making that decision, the district and its board members acted in bad faith and against their publicly stated goals of being “student-centered”, showing that they do not appropriately care for the children in their charge and demonstrating that they cannot be trusted to make difficult decisions that impact the education of the children of the Mad River Valley and the wider school district.
I do not seek to invalidate your frustration and anger at having a decision made about your child’s education that you disagree with. That is a natural response when advocacy for your child does not deliver the outcome you hoped. I applaud you for the steps you have taken to engage with the district and advocate for your son.
However, I firmly reject your claim that the HUUSD’s decision demonstrates that its administration and board operate in bad faith and cannot be trusted. This view of the HUUSD and its decision-makers damages the public discourse around our schools and does not build the community that you seek. Presuming bad faith, there is no reason to engage with the HUUSD, whose actions seem sinister or even cruel: the board chair’s unwillingness to discuss the outcome and the impersonal and high-level explanation of the district’s decision show that the request was not considered carefully. If you instead assume that the HUUSD and the individuals within it are acting in good faith, trying to best meet the needs of and provide opportunities for all of its students while fulfilling legal and budgetary requirements, then you could see these actions as reflecting the difficulties of that task. What you took as a dismissive rejection from the district’s administration could be instead a careful consideration filtered through the necessities of protecting the privacy of families in the district, including your own. I am not suggesting that you need to agree with the decisions of HUUSD or refrain from challenging those you disagree with. On the contrary, you can and should question HUUSD decisions, as you have done. But questioning decisions from the bad-faith perspective shuts down the space for discussion and divides us, while the good-faith point of view opens up the possibility of dialog and improvement while also building community bonds.
The larger point is this: in a season of dire budgetary outlooks, tax burdens that already feel unbearable and are still rising, consolidation discussions, and looming difficult and uncomfortable decisions, we will be best served by assuming that the HUUSD and its board, and everyone else in the community, are well-intentioned. We can and should debate how best to operate our schools within the current realities of declining enrollment, increasing costs, and state-driven budget cuts. But we can choose to do so believing that each individual has the best interests of the whole community and their place within it at heart. We can choose to let our emotions and feelings for the schools, our children, and our community drive us to get involved and guide what we advocate for while also using our reason to assess the broader trends, evaluate options, make the difficult decisions in our control, and accept that a decision can be valid and made in good faith even if it is not the result we sought. Engagement is messy and can feel frustrating, unsatisfying, and seemingly fruitless at times. By participating anyway, acting in good faith and believing that others do the same, we can build the community bonds that will serve us and our schools as we move forward.
That is how we will truly make the school district belong to the community and it is how I hope to act. I hope you will as well.
Naden, Fayston
