Principal Joelle Brookner, foreground, talks about the start of the school year with the School Committee and Superintendent Douglas Dias, second from right.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — For the second time in six months, the Williamstown Elementary School Committee may be looking to tap a building renewal endowment created when the school was built in 2003.

 

The committee on Wednesday night heard that one of the school's three boilers is offline and another may need repairs.

 

New Superintendent Douglas Dias delivered the bad news.

 

"As I've been led to understand, we really only need two," Dias explained. "The reason there are three is as a backup or if it gets unusually cold — unusually cold even for here.

 

"In the process of looking at the one that is out of commission, there is a second boiler that is suspect but not at the point where it is inoperable.

 

"So we have one working boiler, one that is questionable and one that is non-working."

 

The good news is that the district also has a building endowment in excess of $1 million that was created by Williams College when the school was built.

 

In the spring, the committee voted to dip into the endowment to pay for technological upgrades and for the installation of new controls on the boilers.

 

Dias told the committee that it is his understanding that the controls, budgeted at $39,781, will be compatible with a new boiler if the current equipment is replaced.

 

Committee members asked the school's administrators whether the district had any recourse with the manufacturer given the boiler's failure so early in its life cycle.

 

"The warranty has expired," Business Director Nancy Rauscher said. "But in doing some research, there was a period of time when the manufacturer of these boilers was issuing a product that was substandard.

 

"I discovered there was a class action lawsuit. I don't know the outcome of that. We can explore it, but we can't count on it."

 

Dias said the elementary school is consulting with Williamstown Public Works Director Tim Kaiser and Mount Greylock Regional School facilities supervisor Jesse Wirtes, who has experience from the junior-senior high school's 2009 boiler replacement project.

 

"Jesse is recommending that we bring in a local vendor he's familiar with to take apart the [working] boiler and give it a once over, to better understand what our options are," Rauscher said.

 

School Committee Chairman Dan Caplinger said the committee will look forward to a report back from Dias at its October meeting.

 

In other action on Wednesday evening, the committee approved new district policies on bullying and procurement of big ticket items, reviewed its meeting calendar for the academic year and heard that the school's special education program received a glowing report from its tri-annual coordinated program review.

 

"To have the results on the coordinated review that the school received is impressive," Dias said after Director of Pupil Services Kim Grady gave her report. "It is an audit of policies, procedures and records. To come out with zero ... findings is noteowrthy."

 

The committee also discussed a situation that has occupied the Mount Greylock School Committee in recent weeks, the attempt by officials in the town of Adams to entice Lanesborough to withdraw from the Mount Greylock Regional School District.

 

Dias discussed his conversations with officials in Adams, Lanesborough and the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District, noting that he only has spoken briefly with his counterpart in Adams-Cheshire.

 

"I will always try to find a way to collaborate with other districts to get our students the best education," Dias said. "If it comes at the expense of the union that creates Mount Greylock, I need to respectfully decline."

 

Caplinger said his committee is ready to cooperate fully with its counterparts at Mount Greylock and on the Lanesborough Elementary School Committee, which opposes talk of dissolving the junior-senior high school district. And, Caplinger noted that he looks forward to a more congenial relationship with the Lanesborough committee under the umbrella of Superintendency Union 71, the shared service arrangement by which both schools have the same superintendent.

 

Recent turnover on the Lanesborough School Committee has quelled talk of Lanesborough withdrawing from SU 71.

 

It was unclear on Wednesday evening what role the Williamstown School Committee has in the discussion about where to send Lanesborough's seventh- through 12th-graders. But it was obvious that its members were concerned.

 

"As far as this building is concerned, what you stand to lose is the future," Dias said. "Having a kid in elementary school and not knowing what their future is educationally is something I'd have a tough time imagining as a parent myself."