To the Editor:

"Mount Greylock School Committee Members Push to Keep Diversity Post in Budget" (March 27) prompts responses from Lanesborough, Williamstown and other towns that send their students to the Mount Greylock Regional School District.

The DEI position has been a source of controversy since its creation. There is little, if any, disagreement that our communities want our schools to be welcoming and free of bias. The controversy stems from determining the best way to achieve this goal. Superintendent McCandless was spot on when he said that advocating for the schools "in complete isolation of the bigger picture ... is not a good recipe for actually getting a budget through town meeting. It is not a good recipe for building a long and respectful relationship with the community you depend on for financial support."

I urge the Mount Greylock Regional School District to reach out now to the sending communities with specifics about the initiative. They may have done this somewhat before, but there is still a great deal of uncertainty about what Superintendent McCandless described as "[an] ethically and morally mandated position."