Waterford school board race brings several new faces onto the ballot
Waterford — With Superintendent Thomas Giard settling into his third year on the job and the yearslong school building project finished, the town’s school board elected Nov. 7 mostly will be responsible for monitoring the dayto-day operations of Waterford schools and adjusting to an ever-changing education funding outlook in the state budget.
The nine members of the school board serve staggered four-year terms, and four seats are on the ballot this year. Democrat Miriam Furey-Wagner will occupy a fifth spot on the ballot, running for the last two years of the term she took over when Kevin Brunelle resigned last year.
Only one incumbent school board member, Democrat Gregory A. Benoit, is running for one of the four open seats.
The rest are relatively unfamiliar to Waterford voters: Democratic nominees Joy M. Gaughan and Elizabeth G. Gonzalez are new faces on the ballot, as are Republican nominees Olga Bush, Chris Jones and Jewell Jones. Candidate Deborah Rosselli-Kelly, a Democrat who was cross-endorsed by the Green Party, ran for the Representative Town Meeting in 2015.
Incumbent Republican members Kathleen McCarty, the Town Committee chairwoman, and Lisa Barry are not running for re-election, and neither is incumbent Democrat Anne Ogden, leaving the Republicans’ 5-4 majority open to being either overturned or strengthened by one member.
State laws about minority party representation on town boards mean voters can elect no more than six candidates from one party to the school board.
Current school board members not on the ballot this year — Marcia Benvenuti, Amanda Gates-Lamothe, Craig Merriman and Chairwoman Jody Nazarchyk — will be up for election in 2019. Furey-Wagner is uncontested for the two-year term she is seeking to serve.
In addition to making decisions about curriculum, personnel changes and building maintenance, the school board makes initial decisions each year about the education budget, which comprises about 60 percent of the town’s spending.
School board changes to the superintendent’s budget proposal for the past two years have been minimal, and both years the board has had to adjust to larger cuts made by the Board of Finance and Representative Town Meeting later in the budget process.
The board has contended with the rising costs of participating in an agreement with New London to send Waterford children to the magnet pre-kindergarten and kindergarten Friendship School, last year voting to leave the agreement and stop paying its portion of the school’s budget.