WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A member of the Board of Selectmen on Monday laid out his suggestions to strengthen local control over elementary schools in a proposed expansion of the Mount Greylock Regional School District.

 

After board heard a presentation from the chairman of Williamstown Elementary School Committee laying out the reasons why his panel is advocating for regional expansion and how the draft amendment would partition budgets for WES and Lanesborough Elementary School, Selectman Andrew Hogeland thanked the school official for his work but said it did not go far enough.

 

"My view so far is the mid-September draft doesn't do enough about local control," Hogeland said. "Local control today for the elementary school is people of the Town of Williamstown vote for an elementary school committee, that committee proposes to town meeting a budget, and town meeting can accept it, reject it or modify it.

 

"Under regionalization, the school council … consults with the principal, they suggest something to the Regional School Committee, and they can do whatever they want with that. The big decision making in the structure starts with the Regional School Committee."

 

WES Committee Chairman Joe Bergeron and interim Superintendent Kimberley Grady emphasized the importance of the school councils at each of the three schools that would comprise an expanded district: WES, LES and Mount Greylock.

 

Grady admitted that Williamstown has not had a historically robust school council because the single school district had a five-member elected School Committee to watch over the building. The school council model is designed specifically to gather input from parents, teachers and community members, in concert with principals, to advocate on behalf of schools to regional school committees.

 

"Does [regionalization] mean the elementary schools will be neglected and the middle/high school will be the focus [of the district]?" Bergeron asked rhetorically. "The honest answer is that will only happen to whatever extent the elementary school families and communities around them decide they don't need to participate in the school councils.

 

"That's not something we need to be concerned with unless we as a community are going to fail our school."

 

As far as financing the elementary schools, the task force led by Bergeron and Regina DiLego, his counterpart on the Lanesborough committee, developed a model in which each town would be assessed for the operating expenses of its own elementary school.

 

Four years ago, when the idea of regionalization was last discussed, the K-6 elementary expenses for Lanesborough and Williamstown would have been combined and spread between the two schools based on enrollment. Because Lanesborough is a smaller school where fixed costs are distributed over a smaller number of pupils, some of that cost would have shifted to Williamstown under the 2013 model.

 

This time around, the three school committees have endorsed a plan under which the towns will continue to share operating costs at Mount Greylock based on the number of students each sends but the elementary school costs will be segregated in the budget, with each town getting billed only for the operating cost at its school.

 

The funding approach has been used in other regional school agreements in the commonwealth, and officials at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education have signaled their approval of the budget mechanism.

 

Bergeron said that isolating the elementary school budgets will ensure that each building maintains its uniqueness without driving the K-6 budget in the other town.

 

"Someone joked that if [one of the elementary schools] wanted to have gold desks, it could still do so because it would not affect the other town," Bergeron said.

 

Hogeland countered that while the assessment to each town will be based on its elementary school's budget, town meeting voters would not be able to vote on the elementary school budget, per se. Rather, the town meeting warrant article would be a "bottom line" number that includes the proportional assessment for Mount Greylock and the operating cost for WES combined into a single number.

 

That did not sit well with Hogeland.

 

"I would like to get to yes on this, but I'm not there," he said.

 

To allay his fears, Hogeland suggested several remedies.

 

"The first is to address the historical weakness of the school council by making the principal certify it exists, it's doing its job and it has done its job," Hogeland said. "Putting heat or focus on the school council is good."

 

Hogeland also suggested that the the regional agreement require separate votes on the elementary school budgets by portions of the newly constituted Mount Greylock Regional School Committee.

 

As it is now, the Mount Greylock School Committee would be elected by a combined vote of both towns but would include three residents of Lanesborough (the district's smaller town) and four residents from Williamstown.

 

Hogeland suggested that at two stages of the budget process, the groups of three and four committee members hold separate votes. If two of the Lanesborough residents object to the LES budget, it would go back to the drawing board; if two or more of the Williamstown residents object to the WES budget, it would be reworked.

 

Selectman Hugh Daley said he liked that notion because it would create a voting record for the committee members that voters could consider down the road.

 

None of Hogeland's proposals, which were presented to Bergeron earlier Monday, have been vetted by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, a fact that Hogeland acknowledged.

 

Hogeland also suggested that the amended agreement require the Mount Greylock School Committee to draft warrant articles that itemize the assessment, spelling out exactly how much is going to support the Mount Greylock budget and how much is going to Williamstown Elementary.

 

"The fifth [suggestion] is to clarify that any town, like any person, can make a donation to the elementary school for whatever purpose it wants," Hogeland said.

 

That would allow town meeting to add to its elementary school expenditure over and above what the school committee proposes, as Lanesborough voters did earlier this year.

 

"Each of these five things are designed to give what looks like local control," Hogeland said. "Some people might think it's enough without them. I think it might be enough with them. Other people may say it's still not enough.

 

"I understand [whether the suggestions are allowed by law] is not a district decision. This is a DESE decision. If these things happen, you get more voters than if they don't, I think."

 

School officials are hoping to put the amended regional agreement to include the two elementary schools to a vote in Lanesborough and Williamstown at simultaneous special town meetings on Nov. 14.

 

All four members of the board in attendance on Monday thanked the working group developing the draft amendment and, in particular, praised Bergeron for his efforts.

 

But at the same time, Daley questioned whether there was time to modify the proposed amendment in a way that would satisfy most critics in time to get a warrant article before the two town meetings.

 

"I'm concerned about the timeline because two weeks to settle an agreement we have to live with for the rest of our lives feels tight," Daley said, referring to the deadline to get the finished amendment in the hands of each town's Board of Selectmen prior to town meeting.

 

"It's not the rest of our lives because the regional agreement can be opened [and amended] as much as we want in the future," Grady pointed out.

 

And even if regional expansion passes on Nov. 14, there are additional steps that have to be taken, she said.

 

"DESE legal still has to approve it, [Superintendency Union 71] has to be dissolved," Grady said, referring to the agreement under which LES and WES currently share a central administration. "But this vote has to come first."

 

An FAQ prepared by school officials, more background on the regional expansion proposal and a current draft of the proposed amendment are available here.