WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Voters in the Mount Greylock Regional School District Tuesday returned Carrie Greene and Steven Miller to the School Committee in the only contested local election on the ballot.
Lanesborough's and Williamstown's electorate ensured that the School Committee will have the same composition for at least another two years by choosing the two incumbents over challenger Christine Enderle in a three-way race for two seats on the seven-person committee.
Greene was the top vote-getter with 2,661 votes in the two-town district. Miller was second with 1,736. Enderle was third with 1,465.
All three Lanesborough residents on the School Committee stood for re-election on Tuesday in uncontested races. Christine Conry, Curtis Elfenbein and Ursula Maloy each were returned to the committee.
Greene, Miller and Enderle were running for two of the four seats designated for residents of Williamstown.
Miller was at Williamstown Elementary School on Tuesday evening to await the results and said that he looks forward to continuing his work to bring transparency to the School Committee's activities and increase engagement with members of the public.
"One of the things we've done is we now have agenda requests [for committee members] at the end of every meeting, so that makes it a lot easier to have things discussed," Miller said. "One of the things I want to keep working on is to have the meeting packets made available more in advance so that people are able to see what's going to be discussed at the meetings and decide whether they want to go or not."
Miller also committed to pushing for a continued role for the School Committee's subcommittees in providing a conduit for public input.
"One of the things I've been very happy about is in some of our subcommittees, we've been able to have a lot of interactions with people from the community," Miller said. "For example, when John Skavlem was chair of the fields committee, and I was chair of the education subcommittee, we had people speaking whenever appropriate.
"That's easier to do at the subcommittee level than the full committee level."
Williamstown saw 2,823 voters turn out for the mid-term election, which is more than the 2,500 voters who might be expected for the cycle, according to Town Clerk Nicole Beverly.
"It was a good day," she said as the balloting wound down on Tuesday. "A busy day, but a good day."
Fifty-six percent of the town's 5,009 registered voters voted either in person on Tuesday, in person at town hall during the early voting period or by mail.
Beverly said there were 178 in-person voters during the early voting period. She said she mailed out 1,267 mail-in ballots and had received, as of midday Monday, 1,185, a 94 percent return rate.
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Mount Greylock Schools Bracing for Another Big Health Insurance Hit
By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Like municipal entities across the county, the Mount Greylock Regional School District is bracing for another year of steep increases in health insurance costs.
It is unknown just how steep, but Superintendent Joseph Bergeron tried to prepare the School Committee at its January meeting on Thursday.
"The rumors, just so you hear them from me … are not confirmed, but right now, the projections are we might be close to a 20 percent increase in what's proposed in order to have premiums cover cost," Bergeron said.
"We're going to see where that goes. That's not at all confirmed. But, if true, a 20 percent increase, if that needs to go all to the appropriated budget, that by itself would be a 3.6 percent increase in our assessments."
Those are the assessments the district makes to member towns Lanesborough and Williamstown that voters each see in the form of, effectively, a bill that gets approved each spring at the annual town meeting.
For the current fiscal year, FY26, the district sent the towns assessments that were up from FY25 by 6.45 percent in Lanesborough and 7.59 percent in Williamstown.
Those hikes largely were driven by the 16 percent health insurance hike sought by the Berkshire Health Group to cover the cost of municipal employees covered by the joint purchase group.
It is unknown just how steep, but Superintendent Joseph Bergeron tried to prepare the School Committee at its January meeting on Thursday.
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The Teacher of the Month series, in collaboration with Berkshire Community College, features distinguished teachers nominated by community members. You can nominate a teacher here.
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Preparation for the event began in early December, with students crafting bells to accompany their singing. The handmade cards were completed last week.
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