Letter: Response to Mr. Williams

Letter to the Editor04:00PM / Friday, January 13, 2023Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

The response is appreciated, Mr. Williams. First, I'm sorry for the error regarding fundraising; it was not intentional. Second, I want to be clear that I agree that the youth center is vital to the town and community.

Additionally, I applaud that the youth center raised its rates, but I don't understand why it's "an option for families to pay more if they are able." Many in this community can pay a going rate for their children's care and the quality programming offered at the Williamstown Youth Center (WYC).

I gather that the national average for after-school care is $261 a week for one child. That figure is based on three hours a day, 15 hours per week, at an average $17.40 per hour.

According to the local school calendar, a school year constitutes 180 days of school for students. At the least, that's 2.5 hours per day for 180 days of after-school care provided by the WYC, totaling 450 hours per child. If I understand correctly, the youth center charges $900 per child for after-school care for the entire school year. Assuming that's accurate, then the youth center receives, per child, $2 per hour. If a child only attends the youth center for half a week, the rate increases to $4 per hour. Both rates are well below the national average.

This community comprises academics, lawyers, wealth managers, physicians, and other steady and well-paying positions. Yet it almost seems taboo for the WYC to be paid what it's worth by the families who can afford it. At the heart of the matter, the issue isn't that the town's taxes support the youth center but that it's only just that the youth center should first be paid by its families, adequately and appropriately, for the quality services they receive.

Pat Meyers
Williamstown, Mass.

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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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