LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — The tri-district knows it is will have an increase in costs for central office but at this point, isn't sure what that'll be. 

 

The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee has hired an architect because the new building project does not include space for the administration offices currently located at the high school. The offices will have to close next year.

 

Mount Greylock officials have started the process but aren't far along given there is still 13 months before the central office needs to move, but some of those expenses are expected to hit budgets that are being crafted now.

 

The boards of Mount Greylock and Supervisory Union 71, representing the Williamstown and Lanesborough school districts, met briefly on Thursday to discuss options.

 

"We are not going to have a house for our central office administration as of April 1, 2018. That is actually in the next budget year and we, Mount Greylock, as part of the Williams [College] gift, are exploring the options for where we will have central administration and shared services people. The options are pretty obvious: find some place to rent on the Route 7 corridor between the two elementary schools or build, which might be extreme," said Mount Greylock School Committee member Chris Dodig.

 

The three school districts — Mount Greylock, Lanesborough and Williamstown — split the costs to run the central office, which operates out of the middle and high school. But there is no rental cost. Supervisory Union 71, made up of Williamstown and Lanesborough, has created a line in its budget for the central office but at this point isn't sure how much to fund it. Administrators will have to forecast what will be needed.

 

"With the uncertainty around regionalization, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to build right now. It probably makes more sense to rent until we are sure we are together for the long haul," Dodig said. 

 

The architect will explore both elementary schools — Williamstown and Lanesborough — to see if those would work. The Lanesborough Board of Selectmen has previously suggested operating out of the Lanesborough School but interim Superintendent Kimberly Grady has said there is not enough room available for the entire central office staff.

 

The costs of running the central office — from phone bills to supplies to personnel — are already split according to a formula.

 

"Whatever arrangement we make we are probably going to want to split it according to the percentage," said Mount Greylock School Committee member Carrie Greene.

 

The decision of where that office space will be located will be made through a joint meeting between the three school districts — a complication school officials say can be avoided if the schools moved forward with regionalization.

 

The regionalization effort has put many things in flux as officials have avoided locking into long-term agreements that would have to be completely revamped should it move forward.

 

In other business, Grady said six candidates are expected to be interviewed to fill in as interim business manager. A month ago, Nancy Rauscher abruptly resigned from the position, leaving the district lacking in two leadership positions during budget development.  

 

"We are interviewing three on March 7 and three on March 16," Grady said.

 

The position was approved to pay a per diem rate of $345 per day, without benefits. Again, the regionalization efforts loom over the handling of administrative staffing because it could change the job dramatically. 

 

Instead of overseeing three budgets, under regionalization, there would only be one. The same goes for the number of school committees and so forth. The district saw heavy turnover in administrative roles in recent years and often cited is the complexity of managing three separate school systems. 

 

Grady was named interim superintendent after the departure of Douglas Dias and school officials are now re-crafting the assistant superintendent job description — the role Grady anticipates returning to when a permanent superintendent is hired. 

 

"Part of the purpose here is to make sure there is a job description for the role you will go to on July 1, 2018,  by default," Joseph Bergeron, who chairs SU71, said. 

 

Bergeron is also asking to expand the cost sharing agreement to a single decimal point. Right now the percentages each school pays is spelled out by a formula and split by percentages. The shared service agreement, however, doesn't specify how detailed the percentages are and Bergeron is hoping to factor in tenths of a percentage to help ease any major swings in those numbers — giving the individual schools a better chance to react to the changes.