WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The chairman of the Williamstown Elementary School Committee understands the challenge of educating voters ahead of a planned November special town meeting on school regionalization.

 

"There are people walking around Williamstown right now saying, 'Why would want the elementary school to have the same superintendent as the high school?' " Joe Bergeron said at Wednesday's committee meeting. "You look at them and say, 'We've had the same superintendent since 2010,' and they're like, 'Really? Oh, OK.'

 

"People don't realize where we're at now. At the same time, there are also legitimate concerns we need to hear and address."

 

Where Williamstown's and Lanesborough's schools are now is under a "Tri-District" umbrella, an arrangement where both town's elementary schools and Mount Greylock Regional School share central administration, including the superintendent.

 

Educators and officials say the arrangement has served the towns well: lowering costs (compared to the cost of each district hiring its own central administration) and allowing the three schools to align their curricula, which makes for a better experience for students from both towns transitioning to the junior-senior high school.

 

Those same officials say that the Tri-District arrangement, while beneficial, is not sustainable.

 

The administrative burden on the central office is described with words like "onerous," "unwieldy" and "inefficient," and the structure that forces the superintendent to answer to three different school committees is thought to have limited the candidate pool for that office in the past.

 

Currently, the Tri-District is served by an interim superintendent, and the Mount Greylock School Committee earlier this year pushed for a November vote on full regionalization at least in part because it wanted to have a new structure in place before launching a search for a full-time replacement.

 

This week, the Mount Greylock committee decided to take a back seat and let the elementary school committees and town governments direct the conversation ahead of the November vote. On Wednesday, the WES Committee discussed what it can do to help get information out to voters.

 

"I think, in an ideal world, this would be a conversation that is active on every street corner in Williamstown and Lanesborough, and we'd come together in town halls to … come to a solution to make sure we're getting the best educational opportunity we can," Bergeron said. "How we can get to that ideal, I'm not sure."

 

Bergeron said that while Mount Greylock has suspended meetings for its Regional District Amendment Committee, on which he serves, the RDAC's working groups are not inactive. And people looking to find out more about the reasons behind the regionalization vote can look to a 2013 report compiled by Mount Greylock's first RDAC.

 

Bergeron said he hopes to get together with his counterpart in Lanesborough, town Finance Committee member Stephen Wentworth, to continue working on financial projections.

 

Those financial projections figure to be one of the sticking points when the topic of regionalization is discussed among Williamstown residents.

 

According to the financial projections developed in 2013, Williamstown's cost for K-6 education would go up under a K-12 regionalization plan, while Lanesborough's tax bill would drop.

 

That point was driven home to the Williamstown School Committee on Wednesday night during the public comment portion of the meeting.

 

"The consultant who studied this matter a few years ago reported back that full regionalization would have a major financial impact on Williamstown amounting to in excess of $200,000 each year in part because of the higher property valuations here," Williamstown resident Gordon Squire told the committee. "Not surprisingly, Lanesborough would be only too glad to be a recipient, particularly when lease income from large box stores at the mall of Route 8 has and will fall off substantially."

 

The other concern raised by those skeptical of regionalization is local control and the perception that Mount Greylock is "taking over" the elementary schools.

 

Committee member Dan Caplinger provided some evidence that that fear may be overstated. At a recent RDAC meeting, he told his colleagues, he suggested changing a transitionary committee that would govern the transition to a K-12 region.

 

"I suggested that perhaps you could change the balance so there was more elementary school participation," Caplinger said.

 

The RDAC agreed that instead of having all seven Mount Greylock School Committee members on the transition committee, it would make more sense to have three from Mount Greylock and two each from Williamstown's and Lanesborough's Elementary School Committees.

 

"I think it was a member of the Greylock committee who suggested reducing the number of Greylock committee members," Caplinger said.

 

"Going forward, it's everyone working together for all the schools, like we all are now. We just have different hats we wear when we're at these committee meetings and have a specific group of students we're responsible for."

 

Bergeron had a couple of ideas about how the Williasmtown School Committee can facilitate the conversation about regionalization. He recently met with a group of about 15 WES teachers to hear their concerns about the issue, and he said he will pass along results of an RDAC online survey to his colleagues on the elementary school committee.

 

Going forward, Bergeron said he planned to contact Lanesborough School Committee Chairwoman Regina DiLego and explore options for public meetings and fora that can help educate voters. He also said the school committees should coordinate with their counterparts at town hall.

 

"I believe the answer is we need to come up with a way as two communities to fully understand the questions and concerns, fully understand the options and be able to move forward," Bergeron said. "The worst case scenario is we hit November and there's an uninformed vote in either direction."