Letter: Andrea Harrington for DA

Letter to the Editor07:08PM / Tuesday, August 09, 2022Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

The election of Andrea Harrington was part of a wave of progressive DAs across the country elected by people who recognize that our justice system is too often unjust and in need of meaningful change.

District Attorney Harrington has been true to her word as a reformer. Her opponent embraces the old paradigm that the justice system is the right way to rehabilitate, and embraces the use of diversion programs embedded in the justice system— expensive programs that expand the criminal legal system.

District Attorney Harrington embraces an approach grounded in public health and a harm-reduction approach. She embraces diversion to public health programs that do not sit inside the justice system. She understands that labeling people who use drugs as criminals, and calling them addicts is harmful, and she supports proven harm-reduction approaches that save lives.

Andrea says her office will never work with ICE because they need to build trust with the immigrant community. Her opponent says he will cooperate with ICE, as he sees fit. Our criminal justice system is riven by injustice where those in poverty and people of color are disproportionately prosecuted and incarcerated. Andrea has shown true leadership in embracing criminal justice reform — working toward true structural change — and that is why she has received endorsements from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Attorney General Maura Healey.

Please vote for Andrea on Sept. 6 so that she can continue this important work.

Wendy Penner
Williamstown, Mass.

Tags: election 2022,

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:57AM / Tuesday, August 25, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee recently approved an updated policy on time-outs, seclusion and the physical restraint of students.

The policy is based on updated state regulations that came down last winter. Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the panel at its August meeting that his office waited on recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that were released in May and ran the proposed changes past the district's legal counsel.

That timing — and an expectation from the commonwealth that districts have the updated policy in place for the start of the 2026-27 academic year — led to an expedited process for the School Committee, which did not do a first read with a vote at a subsequent meeting as is its practice.

"Policy JKAA speaks to the ways the school district and our procedures shall abide by the updated state regulations," Bergeron said. "We're not going to have a lot of leeway.

"Nothing about the way we interact with our students on a day-to-day basis is being shifted by this."

For example, the commonwealth does not allow schools to use "seclusion," or, "the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area, with or without adult supervision," except some extreme cases, like when, "when student behavior poses an imminent threat of assault, or imminent serious physical harm to self or others, but only if safeguards are accounted for," the updated policy reads.

"From the state's perspective and my perspective, the idea of locking a child in a room without adult supervision is something we've never done," Bergeron said. "And it's something the state wants to make explicitly that nobody ever does."

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