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Special Ed Preschool Issue Continues to Vex Williamstown School Committee

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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Superintendent Douglas Dias, left, and Chairman Dan Caplinger at Wednesday's meeting. Caplinger several times had to stop comments on school personnel.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — School Committee Chairman Dan Caplinger said he left the school's Side-by-Side program off the agenda for Wednesday's meeting because he felt the issue was settled, at least for the 2016-17 academic year.
 
Now, he said, he has to rethink that decision going forward.
 
The special education prekindergarten was the only thing on the minds of the three residents who participated in the public comment portion of Wednesday’s meeting. And, not for the first time, those comments strayed into areas where Caplinger had to admonish residents against levying accusations against individual school personnel or speaking about an individual child's experience in open session.
 
Appearing before the committee for the first time, Gabe Pesce told the panel that he had lost respect for the district in the wake of its decision to cut the full-day Side-by-Side classroom.
 
"I have three children attending WES this year," Pesce said. "We moved to Williamstown because of its reputation as one of the best schools in the county. Up until now, we were proud of our school district.
 
"This was before we were exposed to the special education administration, specifically …"
 
At that point, Caplinger broke in and explained to Pesce that attacks against individual personnel in open session are inappropriate because district personnel have rights protected by the commonwealth.
 
"This public forum is governed by rules that protect the public's interest and individual rights," Caplinger said. "The individual's rights have value as well.
 
"While I understand your desire to make a comment in this public forum, I'm nevertheless going to rule it out of order."
 
After a discussion among committee members about whether any discussion of Side-by-Side was appropriate because it was not listed as an agenda item, Caplinger decided to let Pesce continue, with the proviso that he avoid identifying individuals.
 
Pesce then told the committee that the school did not adjust his son's individualized education plan in accordance with the wishes of the child's physician. Again, Caplinger had to break in.
 
"There's an individual person who is responsible for that [in the district], and this sounds like a complaint against an individual person," Caplinger said.
 
Pesce asked whether he could discuss his child's situation at all and told the committee, "I feel he's not being provided the services he needs, and if anyone feels the same, I want you to know you're not alone."
 
Caplinger asked Superintendent Doug Dias and Principal Joelle Brookner to address what remedies were available to Pesce outside the open meeting process.
 
"If there is a concern about anything, contact me,” Dias said. "If it's part of the building itself, Joelle is in charge of the building. The IEP process is delineated [by state law]. … There are always ways of following up. This is the first I've heard of it.”
 
After Pesce took his seat, Maury McCarthy Lawson, a frequent critic of the administration over the Side-by-Side issue who has spoken to the School Committee several times, took the microphone.
 
Lawson began her remarks by telling the committee about her experience with an administrator that required the district to employ the services of the school's counsel.
 
Caplinger immediately jumped in.
 
"I don't see how I can be any more clear about this, and you have done this several times, and you should know better," an exasperated Caplinger said.
 
Lawson cut her remarks short but told the committee that it should look at the district's expenditures for legal work.
 
The third public participant was another frequent critic of the Side-by-Side decision. Steven Miller again reminded the committee of the support a full-day preschool enjoys in the community — as evidenced by the successful protest vote at May's annual town meeting.
 
(Williamstown does have three full-day preschools — Williamstown Community, Williams College and Pine Cobble — with varying rates.)
 
And he again alluded to the idea that Side-by-Side, which charges a fee to families with children not on IEPs, could be more profitable.
 

Gabe Pesce brought complaints about his son's IEP to the committee and was asked to direct them to the administration.
"We would all appreciate a path back to full day as soon as the coming school year of 2017-18," Miller said. "Full restoration is wanted, needed, and fiscally smart. We are fortunate to be in a community with so many talented, generous people; this is an ideal time and opportunity to engage us to make meaningful progress for our school."
 
The committee members did not directly address the full-day restoration question head on. It did discuss whether it wants to develop a list of goals for itself for the year ahead. Caplinger gave his colleagues a set of examples of other school committees' "goals" documents from around the commonwealth and asked them to consider whether they want to go through a similar exercise.
 
Dias told the group that he had seen committees go in a couple of directions with their goals: either an internal list of aspirations that applies to how the committee operates or a list of goals to accomplish in the district. If the latter course is followed, he said, the goals should align with the existing School Improvement Plan.
 
"I see [the goals] as one more vehicle for us to interact in a way that makes us more effective as a unit,” Caplinger said.
 
Committee member Joe Johnson questioned the usefulness of the goal-setting exercise.
 
"The examples of the goals here tend to be either hyperspecific or so general they don't mean anything," Johnson said. "One talks about making a plan to make a plan.
 
"I feel like if we put the same time and energy that we'd put into creating a set of goals into more regular review of the Strategic Plan, that might be time well spent.”
 
The Strategic Plan, a separate document from the School Improvement Plan, is in the works, Dias told the committee. The district this fall will survey community members to gain input about their priorities for the elementary school going forward. That feedback will be added to data from staff and pupils to inform the plan he will bring to the committee for approval later this year.
 
To help the committee work through its own questions about goal-setting and the roles and responsibilities of a school committee, Caplinger asked Dias to distribute to the panel a list of workshops offered by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees with the hope of scheduling one this fall.
 
In other business on Wednesday, the School Committee approved the use of nearly $17,000 from the school's building renewal fund. The majority of the expenditure ($10,183) addresses emergency lighting issues in the 14-year-old school building.
 
"The building is starting to show its age in sporadic areas," Dias said. "Some of the emergency lights in the hallways and stairwells needed to be replaced. In addition to this, there were some roof repairs. We added some sound system upgrades, including outside."
 
The school upgraded its PA system so it can reach staff and pupils on the playground if needed.
 
Joseph Bergeron of the School Committee's recently created Finance Subcommittee told his colleagues that the school has closed the books for fiscal 2015 and ended up a little more in the black than it anticipated.
 
"You'll remember in June the School Committee approved using up to $40,000 from School Choice to close the fiscal year,” Bergeron said. "The administration ended up needing $32,618 of that money, and what that means for us is we closed with $48,229 in our School Choice account. That's our starting balance for FY17."
 
Although that sounds good, the School Choice account — the only place the district can carry a surplus — remains a point of concern.
 
"We had $178,369 rolled over last year in School Choice," Business Manager Nancy Rauscher told the committee.
 
Dias informed the committee that the ceremonial ground-breaking for the Mount Greylock Regional School building project will be Friday, Oct. 7, at 2 p.m.

Tags: preschool,   special education,   WES,   

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Williams Seeking Town Approval for New Indoor Practice Facility

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week gave Williams College the first approval it needs to build a 55,000-square foot indoor athletic facility on the north side of its campus.
 
Over the strenuous objection of a Southworth Street resident, the board found that the college's plan for a "multipurpose recreation center" or MRC off Stetson Road has adequate on-site parking to accommodate its use as an indoor practice facility to replace Towne Field House, which has been out of commission since last spring and was demolished this winter.
 
The college plans a pre-engineered metal that includes a 200-meter track ringing several tennis courts, storage for teams, restrooms, showers and a training room. The athletic surface also would be used as winter practice space for the school's softball and baseball teams, who, like tennis and indoor track, used to use the field house off Latham Street.
 
Since the planned structure is in the watershed of Eph's Pond, the college will be before the Conservation Commission with the project.
 
It also will be before the Zoning Board of Appeals, on Thursday, for a Development Plan Review and relief from the town bylaw limiting buildings to 35 feet in height. The new structure is designed to have a maximum height of 53 1/2 feet and an average roof height of 47 feet.
 
The additional height is needed for two reasons: to meet the NCAA requirement for clearance above center court on a competitive tennis surface (35 feet) and to include, on one side, a climbing wall, an element also lost when Towne Field House was razed.
 
The Planning Board had a few issues to resolve at its March 12 meeting. The most heavily discussed involved the parking determination for a use not listed in the town's zoning bylaws and a decision on whether access from town roads to the building site in the middle of Williams' campus was "functionally equivalent" to the access that would be required under the town's subdivision rules and regulations.
 
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