Mount Greylock Committee Taking Up Delayed Superintendent Search

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee will discuss options for recruiting a new superintendent at Thursday's meeting, which begins at 7.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The chairman of the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee said she plans to discuss at Thursday night’s committee meeting whether the district and its partners should hire a recruiter to help with the search for a new superintendent.

Now that the Tri-District — a combination of Mount Greylock and Superintendency Union 71 — has decided to reopen its search in the spring, it may be time to bring in outside help to advertise the position to a broader pool of potential candidates, Carolyn Greene said on Thursday morning.

"Mostly it would be a matter of getting the word out far and wide," Greene said. "It would be going more nationally. Anything that's posted is a national search, but I guess it would be a matter of being more aggressive."

Since a lot of the foundation of the search has been laid by the Search Committee created by Mount Greylock and SU-71, Greene said the Tri-District would need a "limited contract" with a recruiter if it decides to go that way.

The Search Committee includes school committee members, parents and faculty from Mount Greylock and the two elementary schools in SU-71, Lanesborough and Williamstown. Search Committee Chairwoman Regina DiLego, who also chairs the Lanesborough committee, said on Wednesday that the current Search Committee would reconvene in the spring to conduct the renewed search.

DiLego also said she believes the current political situation in the two towns played a role in the smaller than expected applicant pool for the Tri-District superintendent position. Over the past year, officials in Lanesborough, including members of the three-person School Committee, have suggested that the town explore withdrawal from SU-71 — an eventuality that would change the job and likely the future compensation of any superintendent hired to replace outgoing Superintendent Rose Ellis.

"Wouldn't you be scared off?" DiLego wrote in an email responding to questions. "I personally believe that the uncertainty around the Tri-District and the lack of a decision about regionalization greatly impacted our ability to attract candidates. If regionalization K-12 were a voted reality, I believe we would attract a much greater pool of applicants."

Williamtown School Committee Chairwoman Valerie Hall agreed that the uncertainty about the future of the Tri-District may have been a factor.

"I certainly think the publicity over the last year and the events in the Lanesborough School Committee did not help us," she said.

Greene said those events could have been a factor, but there were other reasons.

"Folks know about what's going on, and that’s good because no one should apply without their eyes being wide open," Greene said.

"In speaking with the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, the candidate pools have been limited across the state. For some reason people are not applying in the fall. … People are nervous about letting their employers know they are looking elsewhere. It's not just Mount Greylock. It's statewide.

"Another factor is the the complex bureaucratic structure [of the Tri-District] — not being streamlined, having all these committees and budgets and contracts to deal with."

The complex nature of Ellis' job — serving three separate school districts — also makes it impractical to share superintendency services with another local district, as was suggested at Wednesday's LES Committee meeting, Greene said.

"Shared services … makes a lot of sense once we're a [pre-K through 12] region," she said. "If we're talking about sharing services as a region with one budget, one school committee, then it's worth exploring.

"But to ask a standing superintendent to take on this complex structure seems unreasonable to me, and I think to most of the [Mount Greylock] committee because it didn’t support that idea in the last meeting. I'm not speaking for the committee, but I think I'm reflecting their sentiment."

Hall said she likely will discuss with her committee at some point the possibility of a recruiter to help with the superintendent search. But right now, the focus needs to be on finding an interim replacement for Ellis when she steps down on Jan. 1.

The Administrative Review Subcommittee — a four-person panel that draws representation from each of the three districts — will conduct the search for an interim superintendent with input from other stakeholders, Greene said.

"There likely will be an interview process done in joint committee," she said. "Everyone needs to feel comfortable with who that superintendent is. Principals need to feel comfortable. The community needs to be comfortable. Confidence is important."


Tags: MGRHS,   search committee,   superintendent,   

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Mount Greylock School Committee Votes Slight Increase to Proposed Assessments

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Thursday voted unanimously to slightly increase the assessment to the district's member towns from the figures in the draft budget presented by the administration.
 
The School Committee opted to lower the use of Mount Greylock's reserve account by $70,000 and, instead, increase by that amount the share of the fiscal year 2025 operating budget shared proportionally by Lanesborough and Williamstown taxpayers.
 
The budget prepared by the administration and presented to the School Committee at its annual public hearing on Thursday included $665,000 from the district's Excess and Deficiency account, the equivalent of a municipal free cash balance, an accrual of lower-than-anticipated expenses and higher-than-anticipated revenue in any given year.
 
That represented a 90 percent jump from the $350,000 allocated from E&D for fiscal year 2024, which ends on June 30. And, coupled with more robust use of the district's tuition revenue account (7 percent more in FY25) and School Choice revenue (3 percent more), the draw down on E&D is seen as a stopgap measure to mitigate a spike in FY25 expenses and an unsustainable budgeting strategy long term, administrators say.
 
The budget passed by the School Committee on Thursday continues to rely more heavily on reserves than in years past, but to a lesser extent than originally proposed.
 
Specifically, the budget the panel approved includes a total assessment to Williamstown of $13,775,336 (including capital and operating costs) and a total assessment to Lanesborough of $6,425,373.
 
As a percentage increase from the FY24 assessments, that translates to a 3.90 percent increase to Williamstown and a 3.38 percent increase to Lanesborough.
 
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