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Unified Basketball teams from eight different Western Massachusetts high schools participate in Monday's opening ceremony.
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Unified Sports' Growth Evidenced at Western Mass Jamboree

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires.com Sports
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CHICOPEE, Mass. — Eight years ago, Special Olympics Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association teamed up to offer Unified sports.
 
Seven high schools statewide started track and field teams.
 
On Monday afternoon at Chicopee Comp, eight schools in Western Massachusetts alone fielded teams in the state's second Unified sport, basketball.
 
"We knew that it would come," Special Olympics' Kathleen Lutz said as the season-ending Western Mass Unified Basketball Jamboree went on around her. "Once school districts see it, it's just an amazing offering for their whole student body.
 
"To bring this experience, the whole school gets behind it. It's just a wonderful program."
 
Unified sports allow students with and without intellectual disabilities to play on the same team and represent their school.
 
Wahconah added Berkshire County's first Unified program last year when it offered a track and field team.
 
This year, Mount Greylock followed suit and joined Wahconah in offering Unified Basketball.
 
The two schools are part of an explosion in the program's popularity statewide.
 
"Last year, we had 25 [basketball] teams," Lutz said. "We have, now, 56.
 
"Unified Track and Field, we were up to 67 programs this past spring, up from 42 the prior year. A lot of those teams then wanted to add basketball. That was the next step in the progression."
 
Agawam, Granby, Holyoke, Monson and host Chicopee all benefited from having two more Western Mass schools, Mount Greylock and Wahconah, added to the mix this fall.
 
"Because of the popularity, administrators and athletic directors are hearing about it, so of course, they say it makes sense, now that it's out in our area to also add," Lutz. "We wanted, geographically, to have clusters of teams so the travel wasn't cumbersome."
 
Neither Mount Greylock nor Wahconah had any trouble filling out rosters for their Unified teams, but smaller schools and districts can and do follow the MIAA model of co-operative teams, where high schools combine to form one team, Lutz said.
 
At the moment, track and basketball are the only high school sports offered under the Unified model, but Special Olympics is always talking to coaches about other potential sports. And the Unified movement itself goes beyond high school.
 
"We do have Unified programs at the collegiate level and in our community programming, which is for adults," Lutz said. "We have used the Unified model elsewhere. We have Unified Champion School program, which is specifically to bring it into high school.
 
"Eventually, we'd like to bring it down into the middle schools, so that students can have this experience and have the opportunity to play."

Tags: high school sports,   Special Olympics,   

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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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