November Date Set for Mount Greylock Regionalization Question

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — As the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee moves forward with its efforts to invite its "feeder" elementary schools to join the district, it is getting some indirect encouragement from the countywide task force looking at challenges facing public education.

"We are the poster child for regionalization," committee member Carolyn Greene told her colleagues at Tuesday's meeting.

Greene represents Mount Greylock on the Berkshire County Education Task Force, which is trying to find ways to create efficiency to maintain the level of educational opportunity in the county in a time of declining population, rising costs and taxpayer anxiety.

Greene said the Mount Greylock effort to fully regionalize — inviting Lanesborough Elementary and Williamstown Elementary — to join the junior-senior high school district, could be an example for other school districts looking at how to more effectively share services and eliminate redundancies.

"If you go from the separate districts, you start by sharing some services, maybe start sharing staffing then start thinking about regionalizing because you already know each other," Greene said. "We're a living example of the things being talked about for other communities and other districts.

"As a result, other towns are keeping an eye on what we're doing."

What the School Committee did this week was hold its first full meeting of the newly reformed Regional District Amendment Committee.

The district's first panel spent 2013 looking at the potential impacts of full regionalization, and the district was on the cusp of bringing the proposal to voters in Williamstown and Lanesborough before the School Committee decided to backburner the idea and devote all of its resources to a successful school building project when Mount Greylock was accepted into the Massachusetts School Building Authority process.

Now that the building project is well under way, with a projected completion date in April 2018, and with the district facing the need to hire its second full-time superintendent in two years, the School Committee wants to reopen the regionalization discussion and find out whether the three independent school districts can finally tie the knot.

Currently, Mount Greylock, Williamstown and Lanesborough share central administration services under a tri-district agreement — the "getting to know each other" phase to which Greene alluded.

But the hiring authorities for the superintendent, the Mount Greylock School Committee and Superintendency Union 71 (for the elementary schools) have decided not to launch a search for the next superintendent until they know what the arrangement will look like going forward.

Turns out, they will get their answer in about six months.

On Tuesday, Greene, who chairs the RDAC, told the School Committee that town officials in Lanesborough and Williamstown have agreed to hold concurrent special town meetings in each community on Nov. 14.

The School Committee discussed some of the challenges that came up during Monday's RDAC meeting and opportunities that school officials see in cementing the relationship among the three schools.

"There were concerns stemming mostly from the loss of local control in Williamstown and the loss of financial control in Lanesborough," School Committee and RDAC member Chris Dodig said. "We talked about some of the responses to those types of feelings."

Greene agreed, and pointed out that the fiscal piece could be addressed by a revision to the regional agreement that could allow each town to control its elementary school budget. But she added that may not be the best way for a K-12 region to go.

"I think there's still a fair amount of hesitation on the part of the town officials in Williamstown and some members of the [RDAC] committee who are looking at issues of local control," Greene said. "Sometimes, it feels like there's a push-pull: a call for equity between the two elementary schools and the issue of local control.

"You can actually have a certain part of the budget [in a regional school district] funded by both towns by formula and some parts that are funded by one town but not the other. Some of the committee members want to look into that. But there's an interesting tension there because it calls into question the equity of the arrangement."

"But it might be needed for [regionalization] to pass one town or the other."

While no formal decisions have been made about what happens if regionalization does not pass, there has been a sense among committee members that the current tri-district arrangement — while it has served the schools well — is not sustainable.

The demands placed on central administration in managing the paperwork and demands of three separate school committee are believed to have inhibited the candidate pool for recent superintendent searches. And, in fact, the first tri-district superintendent, Rose Ellis, warned that it would do just that before she retired.

One of the newly formed RDAC's main tasks is to update the financial information that was compiled in the 2013 regionalization study.

Dodig said that as of right now, the region would likely come out a little ahead financially under full regionalization, but Greene cautioned that more analysis needs to be done. Greene has long stressed that most of the cost savings associated with centralizing administration already have been achieved, but they could be lost if the Tri-District breaks up.

Mount Greylock's principal and Greene each indicated that regionalization is not all about finances.

"Things have progressed very well the last few years [educationally]," Principal Mary MacDonald said. "We have strong partners at the elementary schools, but that's because we forged those partnerships outside the institutional framework. For this to be sustained, it has to be regionalized."

Greene echoed the thought later in the meeting.

"The [Berkshire Education Task Force] has said all along that, 'Yes, we want to make things financially sustainable, but the focus is on quality education and access to education and co-curriculars as well as academics," she said.

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