One current member will continue and two new members will join the Hayden School Board after the board election was canceled due to a lack of candidates.
The Hayden School District Board had three seats to fill as terms near an end, and with only three candidates those seats will be filled by two newcomers and one veteran board member.
Since there is no competition, there will be no November election and the three will become part of the board. The board members whose terms were ending were Tammie Delaney, Kevin Lind and Jodi Camilletti. Delaney and Lind were finishing two terms each, while Camilletti was appointed to a vacancy. Camilletti was elected to the board for two terms in the early 2000's, and will now get another full term.
Camilletti said she wanted to provide some continuity and consistency from the current board to the next board, which will have two new members.
“My father and my grandfather both served on the Hayden school board," Camilletti said, referencing her ranching family heritage. "I'm a graduate of the school, my two children graduated there and my three grandchildren are all currently enrolled. We've had a multi-generational presence and interest in the school district."
Camilletti was appointed as president of the regional BOCES (Boards of Cooperative Education Services) this past spring, and she'll be able to continue in that role. BOCES provides specialized services the local school districts cannot – such as special education teachers that serve more than one district.
“I also wanted to serve as we have a new school building complex, a new superintendent and a new high school principal to work with,” said Camilletti.
The new board members will be Katie Boyle and Evan Fleming.
Boyle and her husband moved to Hayden from upstate New York in 2021 and now have two children in Hayden Elementary. Both children started in pre-kindergarten here, so the Boyle family just started their third school year in Hayden. Boyle was born and raised in the mountains outside Fort Collins and visited the Yampa Valley most winter weekends and long summer breaks up here.
“It was always a dream to live in the Yampa Valley and raise my kids here,” Boyle said.
Her own education journey started at Front Range Community College where she studied forestry and natural resource management, then a BA in political science from Montana State and a MS in environmental policy from Bard College in New York. For the past dozen years, Katie has been the director of enrollment and marketing at Bard's graduate programs in sustainability – a job she now does remotely from Hayden.
“I am hopeful that my higher education experience where I develop recruiting strategies for a population similar to the teachers Hayden seeks to hire,” she said, “and where I have gained a deep understanding of what makes successful undergraduate and graduate students will allow me to bring a unique and useful perspective to the Hayden Board of Education.”
Fleming is a physician assistant who specializes in orthopedic treatment. Fleming and wife Rachel and their three children moved to the Yampa River Valley in 2017 from Illinois, where he earned his PA from Illinois State University.
He had relatives who lived near the mountains and would explore a little more, a little further with each visit. When he visited the Yampa Valley, well, that was that. Today, he works for the Steamboat Orthopedic & Spine Institute, with Memorial Regional Health.
“I saw an opportunity to step up and help out with my children's school and education,” said Fleming.
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