Pittsfield School Policy Panel Amends 'Core' Values

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
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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. 

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PHS Air and Water Quality Within Accepted Levels

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

PITTSFIELD, Mass.— Air and water quality testing at Pittsfield High School came back within acceptable levels, and the administration is open to additional testing. 

Last week, the School Committee accepted test results on the facility that has sat on East Street for nearly 100 years.  The report was done in collaboration with Atlas Technical Consultants and the Pittsfield Water Department. 

Readings were "acceptable" in all tested locations, and there are recommendations for monitoring humidity, replacing equipment, and additional air monitoring when needed.  Some retesting needed to be done, and a couple of sink faucets were removed in the process. 

"If you want every room sampled, we can do it," Mayor Peter Marchetti said in response to Ciara Batory's concerns about air sampling in only a handful of rooms. 

"This is the report that came back, and this report does not show that children are in danger."

Limited indoor air quality readings were done in rooms 102, 103, 104, and 116 on June 31.  Air quality testing was also done two years ago. 

Humidity levels were slightly above American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers guidelines in rooms 103 and 104; monitoring and dehumidification are recommended. 

The report says that mold spores captured in rooms 103 and 104 likely originated from an indoor source.  Custodial deep cleaning was done right before samples were taken, and a retest showed levels within an acceptable range. 

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