Mount Greylock Developing Education Plan For New SchoolBy Andy McKeever, iBerkshires Staff
09:29AM / Friday, April 08, 2011 | |
 The education subcommittee is determining exactly what educational tools should be built into a new Mount Greylock Regional High School. |
School officials toured model school Hudson High to see what state-of-the-art infrastructure should be built into a new school. |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The education subcommittee is thinking outside of the box about what a new Mount Greylock Regional High School will need.
"We have a school falling apart around us and we have to keep putting money into it to keep the doors open," subcommittee Chairwoman Carrie Greene said on Thursday. "You can't design a school until you know what you are going to put in it."
The recently formed subcommittee is looking to educate itself about new ways of teaching so it can tell the building committee what it needs. The subcommittee hopes to bring in an expert educational consultant for guidance.
"I second the idea of getting an outside person to come here," Principal Tim Payne said. "We're way out in the Berkshires; we don't have the connections."
Committee member David Langston said that redoing the scheduling should be the first goal.
"If we can solve that problem, everything else will start to fall in place," Langston said.
Last week a group of school officials traveled to Hudson N.Y. to tour the new high school there as well as attend a workshop led by architect Trum Le, who focuses on building schools that can be "third teachers."
"The concept of third teacher is to move beyond the 200 years of Victorian teaching," Greene said.
Instead of "boxes" for teachers to lecture in, the committee is looking at flexable learning spaces to assist project-based education and collaboration between classes. Hudson High School did that perfectly, Greene said.
"The most interesting aspect of Hudson High is that every student I saw smiled and said, 'hi.' There was a sense of community that I never felt here," Greene said. "Can we think of Mount Greylock as a center to pull these two communities together?"
Greene said a new school should not only be the best environment for the students but also for the general public to use. The community and the environment are benefits for the students and should be incorporated, she said.
"We have two challenging communities and we don't want to short either of them," Greene said.
The subcommittee's efforts are coupled with the building committee updating its feasibility study and Superintendent of Schools Rose Ellis' focus on improving professional development.
Ellis said the administration is hoping to start a new partnership with the International Center for Leadership in Education to help bring the teachers up to date with the newest methods of teaching.
"They can work with us on the areas of curriculum and instruction," Ellis told the subcommittee. "They will come in early fall and do a needs assessment."
The building committee has decided to start from scratch and that begins with a feasibility study to determine how it will upgrade and or rebuild the school.
"The last feasibility student was in 2006 so we want to update that," Greene said. "The building committee has agreed as a group to putting everything on the table."
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