Tri-District Superintendent Douglas Dias meets with school committee members from Lanesborough and Williamstown to discuss his goals.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Tri-District School Superintendent Douglas Dias on Tuesday told his bosses that the challenges of his first five months have been an opportunity to grow in the job faster than he anticipated.

 

From a building project with a strict, state-proscribed timetable to a busted pipe that forced a one-day closure at one of the Tri-District's elementary schools to an effort to break up the Mount Greylock Regional School District itself, it has been an eventful trial by fire for the first-time superintendent.

 

On Tuesday, he met with representatives of the Mount Greylock, Lanesborough Elementary and Williamstown Elementary school committees to discuss his goals.

 

Those goals have changed a little since he came aboard in June, he told the committee members.

 

"I've discussed with all school committees my entry plan, which I was working on before I was even hired," Dias said. "The idea was I would learn how to make the right decisions, learn constituencies and have a deeper understanding before having to make challenging decisions.

 

"The Adams-Cheshire situation allowed me to learn a lot more about our neighbors, about ourselves and the strengths of the people within these committees to help me understand strengths and weaknesses. It provided a context."

 

The Adams-Cheshire situation was a bid by the neighboring school district to entice the town of Lanesborough into a tuition agreement for its seventh- through 12th-grade students, a plan that effectively would have killed the junior-senior high school at Mount Greylock.

 

On Tuesday, Lanesborough School Committee Chairwoman Regina DiLego hoped to put that situation to bed by reading into the record a response to Adams-Cheshire's Superintendent Kristen Gordon, dated Oct. 15.

 

"While there might appear to be potential cost savings to the town of Lanesborough in your proposal, the committee does not feel that there is any educational benefit to this proposed change in our educational system," the letter reads in part. "We have a long standing educational partnership with Williamstown which has provided our children with the opportunity for an excellent education. We see no valid reason to change that. Parents who wish to have their children attend Hoosac Valley still have school choice as an option."

 

Another process that has helped provide context for the new superintendent has been the Mount Greylock building project.

 

"I've learned a lot about building projects," Dias said. "And again, there's an opportunity to get to know people and use the building project as a catalyst to understand what everyone brings to the table both within the school and in the municipal leadership.

 

"[Town Hall relations] wasn't something I anticipated stepping into so early in the entry process."

 

Dias used Tuesday's meeting as an opportunity to introduce the school committees to Kevin Courtney, the longtime Pioneer Valley superintendent who retired from that position and now works with the commonwealth's New Superintendents Induction Program, a partnership of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

 

Courtney is Dias' coach in the three-year induction program.

 

"The coach is someone who is there to help me on some of the leadership challenges," Dias said. "He meets with me once a month and asks me questions … to help me reach the right conclusions. "That's what good teachers do, they ask kids questions."

 

Dias and Courtney share a philosophy that incoming superintendents should not enter a district and attempt to implement dramatic change from Day 1.

 

"He's absolutely right when he says he's had the experience of working with superintendents who come in with strongly held opinions and want to implement right away," Courtney said.

 

"The phrase we use is ‘Hit the ground listening,' not hit the ground running. The emphasis is to listen to people and gather information."

 

Courtney said the superintendents' association and Department of Elementary and Secondary Education started the induction program about six years ago when it recognized a need to help assist new superintendents.

 

"Lord knows there are million things a superintendent has to do," Courtney said. "But the bottom line we emphasize is this is about teaching and learning."

 

Mount Greylock School Committee member Richard Cohen asked Courtney about the challenge Dias faces in being the superintendent of three distinct districts: Mount Greylock, Lanesborough and Williamstown. The two elementaries are part of a superintendency union, SU-71, which shares its central administration with Mount Greylock.

 

Courtney said that challenge is not entirely unique. He also coaches a superintendent who has four schools districts (all elementaries) that are joined in a superintendency union.

 

"What you look for is commonalities that will reinforce and support each other," Courtney said

 

Tuesday night was a good example of the challenge posed to any Tri-District superintendent.

 

It began with an SU-71 meeting at 5:30, continued with a joint SU-71/Mount Greylock meeting at 6:30 and ended with a Mount Greylock School Committee meeting at 7.

 

The multiple meetings, multiple masters and duplication of paperwork were reasons for expanded regionalization cited a couple of years ago by then Tri-District Superintendent Rose Ellis. Ellis, who was the first Tri-District superintendent, told school committees it would be difficult in the future to find someone willing to take on the role of chief administrator for three different districts.

 

The Mount Greylock School Committee at the time was developing a proposal to expand its region to K-through-12, which would have alleviated some of those administrative concerns. But the expanded regionalization study was back-burnered when Mount Greylock was invited to enter into the Massachusetts School Building Authority program.

 

Recently, expanded regionalization has again come up in Mount Greylock School Committee meetings, particularly in light of possible increased MSBA financial support of projects in fully regionalized districts.

 

In other business on Tuesday, the Mount Greylock School Committee approved the warrant article it is sending to each of its member towns asking voters to approve an amended regional agreement.

 

The amended agreement cleans up some language in the 57-year-old document to bring it in line with current state law, but the main substantive change is a new formula for apportioning capital expenses to the towns.

 

The agreement would need to be approved by town meeting. Williamstown has tentatively set its special town meeting for Nov. 17; Lanesborough's is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 1.