A huge budget reduction wasn’t the only topic of conversation at the Hartford School Board meeting last Wednesday — and it wasn’t the most contentious one.
For three years, Hartford School Board Chair Nancy Russell has also worked in the district as a substitute teacher — an arrangement the state has approved, but the town charter appears to prohibit.
At the board’s Oct. 21 meeting, member Colin Butler challenged Russell on two fronts: her district job and her vote at a statewide school board association conference the board did not officially authorize her to attend. Two other Hartford School Board members said the focus on Russell distracted from the bigger issue facing the district: $5 million in budget cuts.
Butler moved to add an item to the agenda “to discuss and possibly act on” an “apparent or actual conflict of interest” by Russell as both a member of the Hartford School Board and an employee of the district “as it relates to matters having to do with reorganization, budgeting and personnel.” With one board member absent, the motion failed 2-2, with Russell among those voting.
At the meeting, Russell read a disclosure statement about her work as a substitute teacher. She said her waiver from the state “entirely eliminates the accusation of a statutory violation,” and that she would “recuse myself from any specific, non-routine board actions or line-item budget votes that directly impact substitute teacher compensation tiers.” The statement did not address the town charter.
Russell, who is serving in her ninth year on the school board, has worked as a regular substitute teacher for the last three years, typically clocking 40 hours a week, according to Heidi Duto, a resident of Hartford. During public comment at the Oct. 21 meeting, Duto called for Russell to resign. She said she had asked the district for payroll records but had not yet received them. Hartford School District did not respond to attempts to verify this information in time for publication.
Under Vermont state law, a school board member may not be “regularly employed” by the district. There is, however, an exception to this law: A school board member can ask for a waiver from the Secretary of Education that gives them the right to work as a substitute, coach or extracurricular supervisor for one academic year, and to have it renewed for subsequent years if they can prove that the district could not hire a replacement “through no fault of its own.”
Russell has a renewed waiver from Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders, signed June 11, 2026. “You have represented that you will only substitute during the 2026-2027 school year,” Saunders’ statement reads. “You have also represented that it has been challenging finding substitute teachers in your area.”
In her email to Saunders requesting the waiver, Russell wrote, “Our district is facing the same situation that most of the schools in Vermont are facing — not enough subs to go around.”
State law isn’t alone in prohibiting this kind of conflict of interest: The Town of Hartford has its own restriction on school board members working for schools. Section 202 of the Town Charter explicitly states that an elected member of the school board “shall not be a Town or School District employee.”
Yet the same section of the charter reads, “The elected officers of the School District shall be … elected in accordance with State statute.”
Which law trumps the other? It’s not entirely clear. At the Oct. 21 school board meeting, State Senator Joe Major told the Valley News that state law trumps town law in this instance, pointing to the 2006 Vermont Supreme Court case Brattleboro v. Garfield, which Major said set precedent for state laws to overrule municipal laws when they address the same specific issue.
In the court’s decision on Brattleboro v. Garfield, however, Vermont Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Reiber wrote, “We conclude that the [town] charter prevails because it is more specific to the Town of Brattleboro than [state law] V.S.A. 963.”
Butler’s other challenge concerned the annual Vermont School Boards Association business meeting, which took place Oct. 15. Russell attended and voted at the conference, where delegates ultimately approved seven resolutions for the VSBA to adopt in its upcoming advocacy efforts.
According to Butler, the Hartford School Board had never officially discussed sending Russell as its representative to the conference: If that conversation had happened, he and the other board members would have had the opportunity to advise Russell on how to vote.
In an email obtained by the Valley News, Butler wrote that he had requested the school board add an agenda item to its Sept. 2 meeting to allow the board to choose its VSBA delegate. According to Butler’s email, Russell wrote back, agreeing that the board needed to vote to appoint a representative. That appointment never happened because Russell did not list it on the agenda.
At 4:50 a.m. on Oct. 16, the morning after the VSBA meeting, Russell emailed Sue Ceglowski, VSBA’s executive director, and Flor Diaz Smith, president of VSBA’s board of directors. Russell copied Hartford Superintendent Caty Sutton on the email.
“My sincerest apologies to VSBA,” Russell wrote. “I am notifying you of an honest mistake on my part.”
Russell explained that she believed the school board had chosen her as its delegate for the annual VSBA meeting, and that she only realized she wasn’t when she received Butler’s email and later reviewed past school board meeting minutes. Ceglowski wrote back to Russell, “None of your votes were a deciding factor.” In fact, Ceglowski told the Valley News that most resolutions passed at the VSBA meeting unanimously or with an overwhelming majority.
Board member Jeremy Warren said he does not think Russell voted for anything the board would have taken issue with. “I also believe that … there was no bad faith in her actions,” he wrote in a statement to the Valley News Monday.
At the Oct. 21 meeting, Butler moved to add Russell’s participation in the VSBA meeting to the agenda, saying she had “misrepresented her authorization” to represent the board. Board member Daniel Schapira seconded the motion, opening it to a vote by the four board members present. Butler and Schapira voted in favor, Russell and board member Cathy Lemire in opposition. Warren could not attend, leaving his colleagues deadlocked, and the motion failed.
Butler turned to Russell. “I would like to suggest that you probably want to recuse yourself,” he said.
“I do not have to recuse myself, but I accept your suggestion,” Russell said.
She turned to Bernie Lambek, counsel for the board, and asked him what to do in the case of a tie.
“If you’re voting, it’s null and void,” Lambek told her.
Butler pushed back, insisting Russell should recuse herself because, to him, voting on her own actions created a conflict of interest. The board chair thanked him and tried to move the meeting forward. Butler then made his second motion, on Russell’s employment with the district, which also failed 2-2.
Russell declined to comment beyond her statement at the meeting. Lambek and Schapira declined to comment for this story. Butler did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
For Lemire and Warren, the question of Russell’s right to serve on the board, and her participation in the VSBA, are distractions from the issues most pressing to the school board right now — such as the $5 million budget reduction on the table for the district.
“The time would have been better spent focusing on the major issues that our students, employees, and taxpayers are facing rather than technicalities and honest mistakes that are trivial compared to what Hartford is currently trying to solve,” Warren wrote to the Valley News.
Lemire sent a similar statement via email Monday: “I find this to be a distraction from the pressing issues facing our district,” she wrote. “Our time and attention need to remain focused on the significant decisions ahead and their impact on our students, staff, families, and taxpayers.”
Russell’s term on the board ends next year.
