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Mount Greylock School Committee Funds Study of Regionalization Impact
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
03:50AM / Tuesday, January 31, 2017
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Mount Greylock School Committee Chairwoman Sheila Hebert, left, and Carolyn Greene, who chaired the district's committee to study expanded regionalization in 2013.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Thursday decided to order an updated cost-benefit analysis of expanding the junior-senior high school district to include the elementary schools in its sending towns.

At its regular monthly meeting, the School Committee OKed a $5,000 study by the Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools. It is the most tangible step to date in the district's revival of an initiative it put on the back-burner in 2014 after the district was invited to enter the Massachusetts School Building Authority's building program.

With the use of a regionalization study grant from the commonwealth, the district in 2013-14 undertook a yearlong study by a committee of 15 representing the town governments of Williamstown and Lanesborough, both elementary schools and the junior-senior high school.

Despite the recommendation of that committee and the inclination of the Mount Greylock School Committee itself, Mount Greylock officials decided they needed to put their efforts into supporting the building project while the district had the opportunity to receive state matching funds.

With the renovation and addition project well under way, the School Committee last year issued a request for proposals for a consultant to help study update the district's information on the regionalization question.

School Committee member Carolyn Greene, who chaired the 2013-14 Regional District Amendment Committee, told her colleagues that a full-blown RDAC study may not be necessary, but the district ought not go to the town with outdated financial data.

"The initial focus will be the Chapter 70 [state aid]," Greene said Thursday. "That's where most of the cost/benefit is, in the Chapter 70 variable.

"If the numbers aren't looking good, we may want to reconsider whether we ask the towns for a vote, but the towns could take a vote [on regionalization] anyway. If the numbers are looking OK, there are a lot of other reasons to take it to the towns: the educational benefits alone and the viability, being able to attract leadership, making it easier on all our administrators.

"It makes us more efficient. All those efficiencies are educational benefits because they take the energy away from bureaucracy and allow us to put that energy into education."

The RDAC findings still are available on the district’s website. Many of the committee's conclusions stand the test of time, but the financial assessments are an unknown without further study.

Currently, Mount Greylock and its two "feeders" share central administration through an arrangement known as the Tri-District. Part of the impetus for the original RDAC was a belief that while shared administrative services generated some efficiency, the arrangement could be stronger, more efficient and, ultimately, more attractive to potential superintendent candidates.

In the fall, the Tri-District lost its first-year superintendent when he departed amid heavy criticism from school administrators and School Committee members. Douglas Dias' predecessor, Rose Ellis, the first to serve as top administrator for the three districts, told the three elected school committees prior to her departure that the Tri-District setup would not be attractive to qualified potential superintendents in the future.

Currently, the Tri-District is administered by an interim superintendent; the three school committees plan to launch a search for a permanent replacement within the calendar year.

MARS and its assistant executive director, Stephen Hemman, who worked extensively with the RDAC four years ago, are available to rerun the financials, Greene said. After Thursday's meeting, she said the initial financial analysis could be available to the School Committee as soon as early February.

She also speculated the towns could have warrant articles on the regionalization question before the voters as soon as annual town meeting 2017 — in May in Williamstown and June in Lanesborough.

"When we get the numbers, we'll take them first to this committee, then to the towns and the [elementary] school committees," Greene said. "These will all be public meetings. As much as we can, we need to talk about this early and often and in public."

Mount Greylock School Committee member and Williamstown resident Steven Miller noted that it is not a slam dunk — even with data about greater efficiency and potential cost savings.

"One concern people might have is: Will issues be lost if we have one school committee for the three schools," Miller said.

Mount Greylock School Committee Chairwoman Sheila Hebert of Lanesborough said there is a safeguard in place to make sure individual school's concerns are heard.

"When you go to the big region, what's important is the school councils, so they can give their input to the budget and the issues important to the school itself," Hebert said. "They can bring all that to the [regional] school committee."

Greene agreed.

"The other issue that comes up is school identity," she said. "It's a very real issue and one we talked about a lot and one the [Berkshire County Education] Task Force will talk about a lot as we move into Phase 2 of our study.

"There's an immediate fear of absorption, but the important thing for us is to have the conversations. Is there anything to be afraid of or do the benefits far outweigh the concerns?"

As with the RDAC discussions of four years ago, the current regionalization talk only applies to the schools that currently share a central administration: Mount Greylock, Williamstown Elementary and Lanesborough Elementary. A smaller town whose elementary school feeds Mount Greylock, Hancock, has a tuition agreement with the regional district. While it frequently is mentioned as a potential addition to the region, that kind of expansion is not currently on the School Committee's agenda.

In other business on Thursday, the Mount Greylock School Committee heard a presentation from North Adams Public Schools Superintendent Barbara Malkas and William Diehl of the Pioneer Valley's Collaborative for Educational Services about efforts to create a similar collaborative in North Berkshire County. And Principal Mary MacDonald and faculty from the school's math department gave a presentation on the need for increased funding for math instruction.


Mount Greylock Principal Mary MacDonald discussed the needs of the school's math department, which was applauded by School Committee member Steven Miller, left.
Following on a December presentation from the junior-senior high school's health department, MacDonald explained that the math department is similarly understaffed, and she plans to include a request for an additional faculty position in each department in the fiscal year 2018 budget.

"Last year, when we were doing the budget, one of the ways we accommodated the needs of the towns … was not to replace Courtney Gibson, a retiring seventh-grade math teacher," MacDonald said. "At that point, by doing careful shuffling and scheduling … the math department, the guidance department and I thought we could get through one year without replacing her, and we did that successfully.

"But we'd like to replace that position very much so."

MacDonald offered numbers demonstrating how popular math electives are at Mount Greylock, where the school in recent years has consistently seen 80 percent of its students score proficient or advanced on standardized tests, and where 67 students last year took the Advanced Placement test in calculus; 67 percent of those students scored a three or higher on the AP test (which scores from 0 to 5), making them eligible for college credit.

As successful as Mount Greylock has been in teaching mathematics, that success needs to be supported through the budget, MacDonald indicated.

"We want more flexibility and want to be able to expand the course offerings," she said. "We'd like to be able to support more sections for some of the classes we offer. Right now, we see some high [class] numbers in algebra — 25 kids in seventh and eighth-grade algebra. We'd like to see those numbers pulled back a little bit."

Miller, a math professor at Williams College, was the first to applaud Mount Greylock's efforts and noted the success of students who have taken his college classes as high school students. Committee member Chris Dodig thanked the faculty as both a public servant and a parent.

Five members of the seven-person School Committee attended Thursday's meeting, which was rescheduled from the week before because of a snowstorm.

 

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