Berkshire Benchmarks Releases State of the County Update

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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Berkshire Benchmarks data team recently released a State of the County Update for 2023. 
 
This brief report builds on the Berkshire Benchmarks State of the County Report published in May 2022 and highlights notable changes in regional indicators over the past year. The berkshirebenchmarks.org website has also been updated to reflect the most current available data. 
 
The purpose of the Benchmarks initiative and report is to highlight the region's successes and challenges.
 
The 2022 Berkshire Benchmarks State of the County report provided a comprehensive overview of our region's performance across eight sectors: Economy, Education, Environment, Government, Health, Housing, Social Environment, and Transportation.  
 
In the future, the Berkshire Benchmarks team will continue to monitor these and other indicators to aid with the regional understanding of changes in these sectors and whether the work happening throughout the region is having the intended impact. 
 
Berkshire Benchmarks is a collaborative initiative managed through Berkshire Regional Planning Commission (BRPC). Our sources are publicly available data, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the American Community Survey, various Massachusetts data sets, and periodic surveys of Berkshire County residents. 
 
Berkshire Benchmarks aims to work with the community to understand priorities and help inform the region on how we are doing and if we are improving. Berkshire Benchmarks enhances the region's access to quality data and analysis. 

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Pittsfield Schools See Better Building Utilization, Continued Choice Outs

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Students return to school in two weeks; Pittsfield will have one less elementary school and around 100 fewer students. 

The School Committee was updated on enrollment for the 2026-2027 academic year during last week's regular meeting. 

At this time, the Pittsfield Public Schools had 4,586 students, compared to 4,682 at the end of the 2025-2026 school year. Superintendent Latifah Phillips said this has been the district's trend for years and is not surprising. 

"Across all of these grade levels, we have a decrease. I believe of about 80-90 students. I think it's at eighth grade that we're going to look into and make sure that our data is accurate," she said to the School Committee last week. 

"But otherwise, the enrollment is following the trends that we have expected in probably the last decade." 

With this school year comes the closure of Morningside Community School and the middle school restructuring that sends Grades 5-6 to Herberg Middle School and Grades 7-8 to Reid Middle School. 

Fifth grade enrollment was subtracted from last year's elementary enrollment, and these reflect the reassignment of Morningside students to Allendale, Capeless, Egremont, and Williams. 

Phillips pointed out that this process has increased the use of school buildings, as underutilized buildings were one of the concerns that led to institutional changes. 

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