Mount Greylock School Looking For Regionalization Vote This Fall
LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Full regionalization of the Mount Greylock Regional School District is expected to go to a vote the fall.
Considerations of fully regionalizing the district have been ongoing since 2013 and are eyed to bring efficiency to the administration of the three separate school districts. Currently, Williamstown Elementary and Lanesborough Elementary make up a superintendency union that with Mount Greylock Regional School, are all separate entities sharing administration. The move would bring both elementary schools into the Mount Greylock district, creating a pre-K-12 district.
"Now we have this very cumbersome structure of shared services with shared services. It is not sustainable and it was intended to be a step toward regionalization," said Mount Greylock School Vice Committee Chairwoman Carrie Greene.
In 2008, the three school districts took the first step with the creation of Superintendency Union 71 to share administration between Williamstown and Lanesborough schools. In 2010, Mount Greylock started sharing services with the union. All of that were the first steps to see how a full regionalization would work.
"It was always an intention. We wanted to see how it worked and its worked very well educationally ... Administratively, not so much," Greene said.
The district office oversees three distinct budgets, working with three distinct school committees, and has to file reports with the state for each school. The administration is also responsible for answering to the SU71 committee and an administrative review subcommittee.
"It is not sustainable on a number of levels and we want to maintain educational benefits but improve the administrative efficiency and make it more cost effective," Greene said.
A 15-member committee performed a study in 2013 looking more deeply at expanding the region.That looked at the financials and what is predicted is that Lanesborough would see savings while Williamstown would pay more, because of the population numbers. Those numbers are being re-examined again.
Greene said the state has said the district would be held harmless in state Chapter 70 funding, meaning the total amount of school aid would remain. She said full regionalization would also increase the amount of Chapter 71 aid, which is for transportation. The state pays about 65 percent of the costs for transportation for regional districts but not for single town districts. Lanesborough and Williamstown elementary schools currently do not get state aid for transportation.
Greene added that a small additional amount could come into the district from the state because of incentives the lawmakers have in the Legislature to encourage regional schools.
What is not quite known financially, however, is what will happen with contracts aligning. Right now each of the three has their own contracts with employees, all of which will have to be condensed into a single contract.
"The prediction based on what we did in 2013 is that the overall savings could be negated by any costs of aligning the contracts," Greene said.
That is still being considered by Mount Greylock officials.
In all financially, it is not expected to make any major changes because the savings have mostly been had through the shared service agreements. Greene said it is estimated that some $400,000 has been saved by the shared services agreements.
But the schools will benefit educationally, Greene said.
"Before 2008, no one in Lanesborough Elementary School knew what they were doing at Mount Greylock and nobody at Williamstown Elementary knew what they were doing at Lanesborough Elementary," Greene said.
The three districts have worked together to align curriculum. When it was noticed that Williamstown students were filling the band classes in high school because those students had an instrumental program and Lanesborough didn't, school officials started a program in Lanesborough.
Greene said middle school teachers are working with the elementary schools to track the progress of students, a single director of pupil services is aligning work, and the principals are collaborating. The school calendars have all been aligned to help parents with children in both the elementary and high schools.
"We've done a lot of work recently on the administrative level with all three principals working together," Greene said. "We are cobbling together and we've done a lot of really good work but we can't sustain it."
Greene says the educational benefits can go to "the next level" with an administrative structure designed to support that type of alignment. She added that the schools will be looking to hire a new superintendent and it would be easier for it to hire for one district instead of three.
If this doesn't pass, Greene said the other options are just "throwing good money after bad." The schools could hire more staff for administration, could go back to having separate administrations, or Lanesborough could enter the district but Williamstown wouldn't.
Greene presented the update to the Board of Selectmen on Monday as the first start of public outreach efforts. School officials have been updating and taking under consideration comments from the 2013 study and are close to asking for a vote.
"We're thinking about the things we didn't cover in 2013," Greene said.
The Board of Selectmen was mostly concerned about the town's say in decisions. The plan now would continue the School Committee having three representatives from Lanesborough and four from Williamstown. Greene said greater emphasis will be placed on school councils to guide decisions at each school.
Selectman Henry "Hank" Sayers said he'd like to see a provision that requires both towns to approve a budget. With the Mount Greylock budget, a districtwide vote can approve a budget whether or not the town of Lanesborough approves it.
Greene said the budget process is a legal process so she isn't sure if that is possible but she will look into it.
Selectman Robert Ericson wondered how the buildings and the land would be maintained. Lanesborough now handles items like snow plowing and mowing because it owns the land and the school. Greene said the town would still own the building but there would be a lease agreement with the district for use.
"I personally think you'll see good support," said Chairman John Goerlach said.
Tags: LES, MGRHS, regionalization,
