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Lanesborough Education Research Committee Loses 3 Members
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
02:10AM / Friday, November 21, 2014
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Lanesborough's Ronald Tinkham participates in Thursday's meeting of the Regional School Options Research Committee.

Committee members Jennifer DeChaine, left, and Regina DiLego. Only four of the original nine committee members attended Thursday.

Options and issues reviewed by the committee.


Carole Castonguay leads Thursday's meeting of the Regional School Options Research Committee.

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — The committee looking at the town's options for educating its children finalized on Thursday the list of options it plans to study.

The Board of Selectmen convened the ad-hoc Regional School Options Research Committee this fall to look at possibilities after two members of the three-person Lanesborough School Committee pushed to withdraw from the superintendency union Lanesborough shares with Williamstown.

The board named nine residents to the research group, but three — including Lanesborough School Committee member Robert Barton and Mount Greylock School Committee member Richard Cohen — have chosen not to serve. Barton and Cohen each resigned from the panel after a contentious meeting last week.

Four members of the now six-person Research Committee soldiered on to discuss nine potential alternatives to the current arrangement. Currently, the elementary schools share central administrative services under Union 71, which in turn splits the cost of those services with Mount Greylock Regional School, the Grade 7-12 district both town's elementary schools feeds.

That arrangement has been strained in the past because of a perception among some Lanesborough residents that the town's elementary school does not receive adequate attention from the Tri-District administration.

"I'll give you one of the problems associated with our current structure," Research Committee member and Lanesborough Chairwoman Regina DiLego said. "If, say, LES feels it's not getting an equitable share of the administration's time and effort, the Lanesborough School Committee can't address it. Union 71 is the employer.

"You can always talk to the person, but if talking it out doesn't resolve it and you have to go to another level, it has to be SU71."

DiLego — the one member of the Lanesborough Committee who has not advocated for withdrawal from SU71 — said Thursday that she wishes Lanesborough had sought remedies short of talking about dissolving the union.

"If the decision is made to stay with the current structure, we could recommend there be some work toward resolving the issues," DiLego said. "If you have the clarity, you don't run into the issue, regardless of the individual.

"That's why games and everything have rules. That's why there's structure and rules to everything."

"Staying with the current structure" is the first option that the Research Committee has slated for further study.

Other options it discussed included: sharing a superintendent with Williamstown and not Mount Greylock; joining a union with an elementary school not associated with the regional school (as Lanesborough did prior to joining SU71); joining a pre-K through 12 district with Mount Greylock; forming such a district and inviting other elementary school districts; joining a "super region" with a district like North Adams, Adams/Cheshire, or Central Berkshire; keeping students at Lanesborough through eighth grade and tuitioning Grades 9 through 12 to another high school; and becoming a charter school.

The committee decided a couple of the options were not viable, including the super region, creating a pre-K through 12 district in the town and the charter school route.

But the other alternatives will receive further study, starting with the committee's next meeting on Dec. 4.

One of those alternatives likely will be put to town meeting in both Williamstown and Lanesborough in 2015. The Mount Greylock School Committee plans to invite both towns into a pre-K through 12 district.

A member of the Research Committee and Lanesborough Finance Committee said the Research Committee's work can help inform the town meeting vote.

"We're providing information to the residents to make a vote on regionalization," Ronald Tinkham said.

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