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Williamstown Elementary School Principal Joelle Brookner addresses the School Committee.

Williamstown Elementary Principal Lays Out Priorities

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Maintaining staff and reinstating programs cut in the fiscal 2017 budget process are among the priorities of Williamstown Elementary School's principal.
 
Joelle Brookner gave a presentation to the School Committee at its Nov. 30 meeting in an order to help the panel understand the budget numbers it will see this winter when it weighs the FY18 budget.
 
"My overarching goal in all of this is to preserve staff," Brookner said. "We're a Level 1 school, and I know we have a budget to be aware of, but we really want to keep the school moving forward. … The most important part of that is preserving the teaching staff and the paraprofessional staff."
 
Specifically, Brookner's written presentation to the committee mentions her intention to maintain four sections in the sixth grade and four in the second in order to keep class sizes manageable. A typical grade at the school has three classrooms, but the current first and fifth grades have 74 and 72 students, respectively, for classrooms with average sizes of 18.5 and 18 pupils each.
 
This year, the largest classrooms in the K-6 school are in the second grade, where there are 20 pupils per room.
 
"Every year you have asked if the [class of 2018] bubble would go up as four classrooms to the sixth grade, and I kept saying we'll consolidate, and we never did," Brookner said. "That's kind of what I'm hoping to do with this first-grade class as well."
 
Other staffing priorities for FY18 include maintaining the school's reading, math and Title I interventionist positions.
 
"The reading and math interventionists were the key [in the school's success on last year's standardized tests]," Brookner said. "It's been a really important addition, and we're basically focusing on the early classes."
 
Brookner’s wish list also includes interactive whiteboards in the first- and second-grade classrooms to bring them up to speed with the technology present in later grades, and a Chromebook for each pupil in the fourth grade, where pupils will be expected to take their MCAS tests online.
 
Although much of the school’s technology is Apple based, the Chromebooks are a good solution for the drive to institute a 1-to-1 computing model, Brookner said.
 
"Going 1-to-1 has been in our long-range plan for six or seven years," she said. "We've researched, worked on infrastructure, played around with different devices. We've worked on a plan that includes Chromebooks for cost effectiveness, utility and compatibility with the MCAS. And they jibe with the Google apps for education."
 
Another funding priority Brookner listed was supporting the "school culture" by preserving specialists (like art, music and library), after-school clubs (like Lego Robotics) and the fourth-grade Shakespeare and Company residency program.
 
"This year, [the Williamstown Elementary School Endowment] helped fill in a huge gap where we had had to cut math club, Lego Robotics and the Shakespeare residency," Brookner said. "Those are the kinds of programs that offer a lot of enrichment and differentiation. I would hope we could put that back in the appropriated budget."
 
The FY17 budget season saw a lot of items on the chopping block as the recently departed superintendent attempted to move the district away from a reliance on using School Choice revenue to fund operating expenses and instead build up a depleted School Choice reserve account.
 
Even with the cuts, the elementary school took the voters a request for a 6 percent increase in the appropriated budget — well more than the 2.5 percent increase originally offered by the town in the development of the budget.
 
The higher tax bill for the elementary school cleared town meeting without comment, but Brookner and School Committee Chairman Dan Caplinger each mentioned that — Brookner’s budget priorities notwithstanding — the district needs to be judicious in its budget requests.
 
"It's helpful for us to get started with our focus on the educational priorities and understand they're integrated into the budgeting process in a way that really focuses us to balance and make tough decisions," Caplinger said. "By starting out with this in mind, it allows us to focus on the kids, which is where our focus should be.
 
"There definitely is a community commitment to serving our kids well, but we don't want to abuse that privilege."
 
The biggest battle remaining from the FY17 budget season was refueled this fall when the superintendent who cut a full-day special education preschool program from the budget (while retaining three half-day sections) left the district. Although the decision was not cited in any of the complaints against former Superintendent Douglas Dias, the controversy created by the cut created a good deal of discord in the northernmost of the three districts he served under the Tri-District shared services agreement.
 
At its November monthly meeting, the School Committee heard from a longtime, vocal critic of the Side-by-Side cut and a resident who made his first appearance before the panel on the issue. Both asked the School Committee to reconsider the full-day classroom cut now that Dias is no longer the superintendent.
 
Sam Crane asked that the committee again look at research he provided the panel in the spring to refute Dias' claim that a 1-to-1 ratio of special needs pupils and typically developing pupils was ideal in the preschool, which is designed to serve the special ed population.
 
"I asked if there was any recognized research that might justify the idea of 1-to-1 as some kind of ideal," Crane said. "In light of the lack of response, I'm assuming there wasn't any."
 
Dr. Erryn Leinbaugh told the committee that he understood that there were a lot of factors in Dias' departure, but he thought the district's fresh start could be a time to again look at the Side-by-Side program.
 
"With his leaving, that throws a lot of things he did into question," Leinbaugh said. "Some of the things he did may have been great and defensible. … I'd ask this committee to re-examine his legacy, particularly his legacy with respect to Side-by-Side.
 
"It seemed to me the primary motivation for removing the full-day program came from the superintendent, at least initially."

Tags: fiscal 2018,   preschool,   special education,   WES,   

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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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