WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee learned Tuesday that it may have a major capital expenditure taken off its plate.

 

The chairman of the district's School Building Committee reported that because of cost savings realized to date in the $65 million addition/renovation project, he is hopeful that the building project will be able to add a badly needed parking lot resurfacing project back into the project.

 

Mark Schiek told the School Committee that he expects the SBC at next week's meeting to put the parking lot work out as an add/alternate.

 

That does not necessarily mean that the building project will cover the cost of the parking lot under its bond, but it means that it would have that option if the project's still-to-be-determined guaranteed maximum price comes in under budget.

 

"Until we get to the point where we get to the GMP, we don't have the final set budget," Schiek said. "There are always unknowns, especially with an add/reno.

 

"When we go to demolition, could something crop up that gives us a larger overrun? Sure. But will not go over our budget."

 

What has changed is that there now is the possibility the project will come in under budget.

 

And rather than spend money from a $5 million capital endowment from Williams College — as the School Committee planned — the SBC would rather have the option of wrapping the parking lot cost into the project's budget.

 

The Massachusetts School Building Authority has a very limited allowance for site work associated with a school project. The regional school district would bear the entire cost for the parking lot no matter how it pays for it — either from the bond or from the endowment.

 

The advantage of keeping it in the project? "It puts it in the 30-year bond that we have very favorable terms on," Schiek said.

 

"It also would allow the Williams money to be used in a different fashion, such as additional money in the maintenance fund," he added.

 

Or an office for the central administration.

 

That need came up later in Tuesday's meeting during a report from School Committee member Chris Dodig, who is running point on the committee's efforts to decide how to utilize the Williams College gift.

 

Dodig said the Greenfield architect the district hired to help evaluate potential projects had been factoring the possible parking lot work into the mix but now would have to focus on other projects, like the superintendent's office, which has been housed at the junior-senior high school but is not part of rebuilt Mount Greylock.

 

Currently, the interim superintendent of the Lanesborough-Williamstown Tri-District and her staff are working out of makeshift offices that are cramped and inadequate and which will be even more unworkable when the central office is fully staffed later this year. Currently, the Tri-District is operating without a full-time business manager, and Kimberley Grady, the interim superintendent, is doing triple duty as superintendent, business manager and director of pupil personnel services, a position she hopes to fill on an interim basis next month.

 

"They're in a cubicle right now," School Committee Vice Chairwoman Carolnyn Greene said. "You have five people in one room. It's not professional. It's not efficient. There's no privacy. It's not adequate."

 

Dodig said the architect is looking at the cost of potentially building a new central office or setting up a modular unit on the Mount Greylock property.

 

"It's a time sensitive issue," he said. "It's not that complicated: You rent, you buy or you build."

 

But the district will not know until November exactly what sort of office it will be be building for.

 

The question about replacing the central office is wrapped up with another issue facing the Mount Greylock School Committee right now: regionalization.

 

The committee has targeted November to ask voters in Williamstown and Lanesborough whether they want to fully regionalize in a K-through-12 district. Currently, Mount Greylock, which goes from grades 7 to 12, shares central administration services with Superintendency Union 71, a partnership of Lanesborough's and Williamstown's elementary school districts.

 

Greene, who chairs the School Committee's Regional District Amendment Committee, has been making the rounds to local town officials to explain the advantages of fully regionalizing. Last week, she met with the Board of Selectmen in Lanesborough. On Wednesday, she was scheduled to present to the Williamstown Elementary School Committee.

 

Greene noted Tuesday that the two towns have saved at least $400,000 per year since forming the Tri-District in 2010 and the savings are even greater — not even including inflation — when you compare the current state to the condition before 2008, before the elementary districts joined in Superintendency Union 71.

 

That said, there is a strong feeling among school officials that the "Tri-District," which has served the three schools well, is not sustainable and, perhaps, an impediment to finding qualified applicants for the open superintendent position.

 

"The sense I have from talking to the chairs of the three school committees, including [Mount Greylock Chairwoman Sheila Hebert] is there really isn't a lot of interest in maintaining the collaboration if regionalization doesn't pass," Greene said. "It's cumbersome. It's challenging for the administration, and it's challenging for school committee members.

 

"We've had enough. We've all had enough. And we haven't figured out how to streamline it except to streamline it [as a full region]."

 

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars saved from consolidating the central administration, advocates argue that full regionalization will allow the three schools to continue to align curricula so that students from the two feeder schools, Lanesborough and Williamstown, are on a better footing when they enter Mount Greylock in seventh grade.

 

On Tuesday, the School Committee approved a list of members to serve with Greene on the RDAC, a reboot of the committee that brought a recommendation for regionalization forward in 2013 before the School Committee decided to back-burner the effort in order to focus on the building project.