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Williamstown Elementary Talks Use Fees, School Calendar

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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School Committee member John Skavlem was acknowledged at his final meeting. Skavlem is not seeking a third three-year term in May's town election. 
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williamstown School Committee began discussing on Wednesday how it can more equitably charge fees to outside groups for use of the school's building and grounds.
 
"For as long as this building has been with us, we have been wonderful members of the community," Chairman Joe Bergeron said. "Many groups in the community and from outside the community have used the facility.
 
"There are questions as to whether or not we're committing more of ourselves to that facility's use than is appropriate given our primary mission is the mission of educating elementary school students. Should we make sure that when people use our facility, we cover our costs in making that available to them?"
 
Bergeron, who serves with committee member Dan Caplinger on the School Committee's Finance Subcommittee, said that group recommends the district consider a model like that used at neighboring Mount Greylock Regional School, the junior-senior high school attended by most Williamstown Elementary graduates.
 
"Their practice is to bill based on wear and tear expected and to cover overtime and other costs with custodians," Bergeron said. "That seems like a best practice.
 
"We would want to do that respectfully to all the groups who have been using the facility."
 
Principal Joelle Brookner, who is responsible for scheduling use of the facility by outside groups, told the committee that the school's single use fee is $20 per hour but that the district largely charges it only to "adult groups who use the gym for sports."
 
Among the groups that use the school and grounds on a regular basis are youth sports leagues (both inside and outside), the Williamstown Youth Center, Girl Scouts and the Friends of Milne Public Library, which holds its annual used book sale each April (full disclosure: the writer of this article has ties to the latter two groups).
 
The Williamstown Theatre Festival uses the school's auditorium for rehearsal space in the summer, but it negotiates a separate fee with the district, Brookner said.
 
"It's a tough situation because … the status of the elementary school grounds is ambiguous in many people"s minds," Caplinger said. "It seems, in many ways, like a town park. I don't think we'd want to dissuade that.
 
"But as [Bergeron] pointed out, there are financial costs we, the school, have taken on in order to fulfill that role. What we've done is taken a look at that and said, 'Is it appropriate?' And if it's appropriate, have we done it in a way that's mindful of what the costs are?"
 
John Skavlem, serving at the final scheduled meeting of his second and final three-year term on the committee, emphasized that the youth sports leagues that use the fields put in time to maintain them.
 
"I would encourage having a conversation with the leaders of those groups," he said. "They're reasonable, and they would understand. A lot of them — having done it myself — put in the time themselves. There may be a balance there of what they're able to contribute.
 
"That's not to say there might not still be a fee, but a conversation would be appropriate."
 
The committee noted that just as recently as three days before the Wednesday meeting, one of the youth sports groups was on the grounds doing field work.
 
"Cal Ripken Baseball was here and did an amazing of rehabbing that field," Brookner said. "And we appreciate it because we use that field as well for gym classes."
 
Brookner also clarified that the potential charges for using the building or fields would not be punitive.
 
"This is not because people are coming in and trashing the building," she said. "It's about recouping costs for towels and toilet paper and extra cleaning."
 
In other business on Wednesday, the School Committee approved a 2017-18 school calendar that again sees the pupils returning on the Tuesday after Labor Day and has a projected last day of school — barring snow days — of June 15.
 
The calendar essentially lines up with that of the school's partners in the Tri-District with one notable exception. Mount Greylock and Lanesborough Elementary School will have full days off on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Williamstown Elementary, as has been its custom in recent years, will have a half day that Wednesday.
 
The committee briefly considered going to a full day off on Nov. 22, a common practice at schools given the high rate of absenteeism because of families traveling that day. But it decided not keep the calendar as it has been.
 
"I like it the way it is," committee member Catherine Keating said. "It's nice to have some time alone the day before Thanksgiving to cook."
 
The committee also talked about consolidating its February and April vacation weeks into a single week in March in order to avoid pushing the school year deeper into June, as this year's numerous snow days have done.
 
Some also have advocated for a March week because it would coincide with the spring break at Williams College, which employs the parents of many of the pupils.
 
Interim Superintendent Kimberley Grady told the committee that Mount Greylock's principal was considering such a move but since the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has not named the dates for 2018 MCAS testing — which frequently occurs in March — the junior-senior high stuck to the traditional February and April weeks.
 
Brookner, who did not express an opinion one way or another about switching to a March break, sounded a note of caution about doing so.
 
"I've been here [first as a teacher] since 1992, and I can think of two times we've had more than five snow days, this year was one of them," she said. "This year was an outlier year. I'm hesitant to make too much of a change based on this year."
 
Williamstown will be making a change a little sooner than expected in the elementary school bus routes.
 
Previously, Brookner told the committee that the school planned to consolidate its bus routes next fall in order to eliminate redundancies. She credited Assistant Principal Elea Kaatz with helping to reorganize the routes to make them more efficient.
 
On Wednesday, she told the committee that Dufour Tours this week asked the school if it could make the change this spring, and Brookner said she will begin notifying families over the next couple of weeks for a rollout in mid-May.
 
Grady said the district would realize a cost saving from reducing by one the number of bus runs for the final six weeks of the school year.

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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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