Pittsfield School Policy Panel Amends 'Core' Values

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
03:56PM / Tuesday, November 08, 2022Print Story | Email Story

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The school policy subcommittee voted to adopt a revised Mission, Vision, Core Values policy after making two amendments during its meeting on Monday afternoon.

Member William Cameron proposed amending the draft to add "Academic Excellence" as a new section in the policy.

The revised section now says the public schools commit to "supporting a community that creates and sustains an atmosphere of intellectual excitement, high student achievement, critical thinking, innovative effective instruction, strong communication, and personal responsibility and growth."

Committee member Sara Hathaway noted that this policy encompasses all forms of student achievement, not just academic.

"One of the points that was driven home to me at the conference that we just attended was that student achievement is the purpose of school committees, helping to ensure that the school system is focused on that," she said.

"They also pointed out that student achievement isn't just academic, and I think this larger mission, the set of core values addresses that."

An "extensive process" of revising the policy began in May 2022, with the District Leadership Council but was then moved to a core committee of staff, family members and community members.

When Superintendent Joseph Curtis presented the draft to the School Committee during one of the meetings, Cameron raised the concern that the draft did not include academic excellence as evident in the proposed core values, Curtis said.

"At that time, I indicated that I would go back through kind of the extensive amount of notes that we have, throughout the process, starting back with the District Leadership Council. As I did recall, a core value relating to academic excellence was in one of the versions," Curtis said.

Curtis sent out the revised draft that included the core value of academic excellence that was in a previous version to the mission and vision committee.

They provided some comments and are now at the point of looking at the proposed draft, the feedback received, possibly making any edits to bring it back to the School Committee.

Tags: Pittsfield Public Schools,

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Pittsfield Schools Get Additional Chapter 70 Funds

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
05:09AM / Tuesday, August 18, 2026

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Pittsfield schools received almost $459,000 in additional Chapter 70 funds, and officials are looking to restore some positions.

On Tuesday, the City Council accepted an additional $458,660 for the Pittsfield Public Schools fiscal year 2027 budget. Mayor Peter Marchetti confirmed that they were Chapter 70 funds, the primary source of state aid for public elementary and secondary schools in Massachusetts.

"What I can tell you is, during the budget process, [State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier] was talking about two different pots of money that she was looking to get, and so some of this came from the per pupil aid amount. That's what the increase in our funding was for,” he explained when asked about how it will be spent.

"It was her intent, and it was the intent of the superintendent, to save positions. Positions that we were cutting from the budget. But I can't give you a definitive answer because the School Committee has not engaged in the conversation of where that money will go inside the school budget," he said.

The School Committee can appropriate the funds at its discretion. Marchetti, also School Committee chair, agreed to notify councilors where those monies went in the budget, per Ward 7 Councilor Kathy Moody's request.

The Pittsfield Public Schools' original $86,855,061 budget included $68,886,061 in Chapter 70 funding. PPS faced a more than $4 million deficit during this process.

Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance Bonnie Howland on Wednesday told the School Committee that they have discussed adding at least four paraprofessionals.

"We're going to try to stretch the money as far as we can," she said, explaining that they talked about maintaining the assistant principal of teaching and learning and Reid but were notified that it will be grant-funded.

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