Rockingham board has 2 seats to fill

By PATRICK ADRIAN
ROCKINGHAM, Vt. — The Rockingham School Board finds itself with two vacant seats because no one ran in Tuesday’s elections.

Having one vacancy has been a common problem but School Board Chair Rick Holloway said the current  situation is more of an anomaly.

“There actually were three unfiled seats,” Holloway said Friday, but Kristen Swartwout filled one as a write-in in Tuesday’s election.

Had Swartwout  not run, the board would not have a quorum.

Entering the election, three of the board’s five members were up for re-election.

The incumbents — Sandy Simonds, Kate Coburn and Evan Moore — did not seek re-election and no residents ran to replace them.

Swartwout, who served on the Bellows Falls Union High School Board, decided to run as a write-in candidate at the suggestion of remaining Rockingham board members Holloway and Margo Ghia.

There would have been a messy situation had that third seat remained vacant, said Holloway.  He and  Ghia would have been unable to appoint new members since they could not legally meet.

The secretary of state would have been required to hold a special election to fill a seat and make aquorum.

“Who knows how long the process would have taken?” Holloway said. “And if [our community] couldn’t find candidates to run in the regular election, what lets us think we’d have them in a special election?”

Holloway, Ghia and Swartwout have scheduled a reorganization meeting for March 19. 

Residents interested in joining the board can submit a letter to the district between now and then.

The board looks to appoint candidates by that meeting if possible.

For now, the board has a quorum, so long as everyone is in attendance.  Hollloway says that he expects the current shortage to pose any quorum issues when the three districts — Rockingham, Westminster, and Athens-Grafton — meet for supervisory union meetings.

It is going to be a busy year for our board, said Holloway,  including the start of a new superintendent on July 1.