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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Potential Berkshire Mall Developer Outlines Plans for Property

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
05:12AM / Wednesday, August 12, 2026

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — The Select Board heard from Cypress Equities of Texas on its potential plans for the Berkshire Mall site.

Cypress's managing director Scott Harrington gave the audience information about the real estate development company, some of its other developments across the country, and what its hopes to do with the defunct mall.

"We thought now would be a very good time for us to make an introduction to the community. There's a lot that I can't say quite yet, but I can share kind of what we've done and where we are," Harrington said.

Cypress Equities was established in 1995 in Dallas and has been building shopping centers around the country.

Harrington said Cypress is under contract with mall owner JMJ Holdings to purchase the entire property, not including the independent Target. The goal is a closing by the first quarter of next year.

He said the plan is to develop the entire site, not to break it up in pieces to sell.

"We build and we lease and we do all kinds of shopping centers. And I brought a couple here to share with you guys, just to give you a little taste of what we've done," he said. "This isn't necessarily representative of what we're going to do here. We're still in the early learning phases of what might work."

Harrington showed properties like The Hill in Dallas, Legacy Square in New Jersey, Bayshore in Wisconsin, University Station in Westwood, and Berkshire Crossing in Pittsfield.

He said they try to get the best national brands and to utilize a lot of green spaces and outdoor events for the community.

"They may be franchise operators, but we want to get UPS and Tropical Smoothie and Five Below, and Footlocker, and all those guys. So you'll see in some of these subsequent slides, we like a lot of public space, green space, and outdoor seating," he said. "We're big in the restaurant business, and we think it's important to create these spaces that the community can be really proud of."

Harrington said they make sure there are no boring walls and like to hire local artists and muralists paint the exteriors, making sure to bring in a local touch.

"You'll see as well we're big in the arts. In this project and the one you'll see in Milwaukee, we hired roughly 25 to 30 artists and muralists that are all local in the market," he said. "We've got a design director who manages all that, and he interviews them all. They submit their little test sheets, and he selects the best versions of the locations. And you take a boring gray wall and turn it into something kind of cool. And these are all local artists that we use."

He said there are already two large tenants interested in the area.

"We've got two large format acre tenants that will be disclosed in the future, that are super traffic generators, and we will effectively have about five and a half to six acres of other land. We call them 'out parcels,' but it's other land for us to build on, and we'll be building retail shops, restaurants with outdoor spaces."

The plan is to stay within the existing improved and paved mall area and upgrade internal roads, ring roads, and infrastructure. They aim not to expand into new undeveloped areas to avoid triggering lengthy Massachusetts environmental and jurisdictional reviews.

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