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Mount Greylock School Committee Chairwoman Sheila Hebert and SU71 Chairman Dan Caplinger conduct Wednesday's joint meeting.

Lanesborough-Williamstown Schools Begin Search for Interim Superintendent

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Lanesborough-Williamstown Tri-District is moving ahead with a plan that officials hope will bring an interim superintendent to the district as early as Jan. 1.
 
On Wednesday evening, the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee held a joint meeting with its colleagues from Superintendency Union 71, the union of Lanesborough and Williamstown's elementary school districts, to consider a succession plan proposed by the two groups' Administrative Review Subcommittee.
 
The subcommittee proposed that the hiring committees authorize it to screen candidates and name a pool of up to three finalists who would be interviewed by the full Mount Greylock and SU71 panels. It is a similar process to the one used by the Tri-District when it hired its last interim superintendent, Gordon Noseworthy, in December 2014.
 
The subcommittee further recommended that the Tri-District look for an interim superintendent for a period of 18 months — allowing time for a thorough search process and the planned completion of the new Mount Greylock Regional School, which is set to open in spring 2018.
 
Mount Greylock shares its central office administration with its two "feeder" elementary schools, although each of the three remains a distinct district with its own elected school committee. Three members of the Williamstown School Committee and all three members of the Lanesborough School Committee serve on the SU71 Committee; together, SU71 and Mount Greylock will hire the next superintendent.
 
Currently, the Tri-District's top administrator, Assistant Superintendent Kim Grady, is serving as  acting superintendent.
 
The four-person subcommittee plans to screen candidates from a pool made up of recommendations of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, which maintains a list of qualified potential interim administrators — usually retired superintendents, as Noseworthy was. School committee members have indicated that there may be additional candidates known to the district apart from that list.
 
The Mount Greylock and SU71 panels had just a couple of questions for the subcommittee members.
 
Mount Greylock School Committee member Wendy Penner asked if the screening committee planned to get input from the three principals, who co-signed a letter outlining a series of complaints against the Tri-District's most recent superintendent.
 
LES Committee Chairwoman Regina DiLego, a member of the ARS, said that group already had consulted with the principals.
 
Mount Greylock's Steven Miller said the hiring process has to be transparent and open to the public.
 
While the initial screening process by ARS would be done in executive session, the final interview and vote to name the interim superintendent would be done in public session, a fact that pleased Miller.
 
Immediately after the SU71/Mount Greylock joint meeting — which included an executive session to discuss a contract matter with non-union personnel — the ARS members met and set a meeting for Friday morning to begin screening applicants.

Tags: interim appointment,   MGRHS,   SU71,   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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