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Volunteers pass out "I voted" stickers to voters on Tuesday morning at Williamstown Elementary School.

Mount Greylock Voters Re-Elect Greene, Miller to School Committee

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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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.

Tags: election 2022,   

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Mount Greylock School Committee Discusses Collaboration Project with North County Districts

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — News that the group looking at ways to increase cooperation among secondary schools in North County reached a milestone sparked yet another discussion about that group's objectives among members of the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee.
 
At Thursday's meeting, Carolyn Greene reported that the Northern Berkshire Secondary Sustainability task force, where she represents the Lanesborough-Williamstown district, had completed a request for proposals in its search for a consulting firm to help with the process that the task force will turn over to a steering committee comprised of four representatives from four districts: North Berkshire School Union, North Adams Public Schools, Hoosac Valley Regional School District and Mount Greylock Regional School District.
 
Greene said the consultant will be asked to, "work on things like data collection and community outreach in all of the districts that are participating, coming up with maybe some options on how to share resources."
 
"That wraps up the work of this particular working group," she added. "It was clear that everyone [on the group] had the same goals in mind, which is how do we do education even better for our students, given the limitations that we all face.
 
"It was a good process."
 
One of Greene's colleagues on the Mount Greylock School Committee used her report as a chance to challenge that process.
 
"I strongly support collaboration, I think it's a terrific idea," Steven Miller said. "But I will admit I get terrified when I see words like 'regionalization' in documents like this. I would feel much better if that was not one of the items we were discussing at this stage — that we were talking more about shared resources.
 
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