WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee last week unanimously approved three-year contracts with the district's three collective bargaining units.

 

The votes, which came after an hour-long executive session to discuss the final terms, were contingent on ratification by the district's teachers, support staff and cafeteria workers.

 

Pending that ratification, no details of the contracts, which run through fiscal year 2026, were discussed during open session. But on Monday, Superintendent Jason McCandless said the financial terms in the deals were not unanticipated.

 

"The contracts approved are all accounted for within the budget which will hopefully be finalized by Lanesborough tomorrow evening," McCandless wrote in reply to an email seeking comment.

 

The two-town district each spring sends an appropriation to member towns Lanesborough and Williamstown for approval at each community's annual town meeting. Williamstown approved its expenditure last month. Lanesborough's annual town meeting is Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the elementary school.

 

Last Thursday, prior to the School Committee's votes, McCandless praised the negotiators on both sides of the table who have been working on the agreements every week since January.

 

"One thing we were trying to accomplish is to have every single person who works in the district feel valued and respected every two weeks when they receive their pay statement," McCandless said on behalf of the committee. "That can only be done in an environment where people are willing to look out for the people they work alongside every day in the school. In 24 years of being a public school administrator, I've never seen anything quite like this.

 

"It wasn't always easy, but I think we got outcomes that make us a more equitable district."

 

The FY24 spending plan will not be the only issue to go before attendees at Lanesboroguh's town meeting on Tuesday.

 

Voters also will be asked to approve the creation of the district's first ever stabilization fund (Article 9) and to allow the district to borrow up to $800,000 toward building a new track and field on the west side of the Mount Greylock Regional School campus (Article 8).

 

Both those measures passed at Williamstown's annual town meeting.

 

Last Thursday, the School Committee discussed how its members have helped spread the word to explain both requests to voters in the town.

 

"Curtis [Elfenbein] and I have visited the Post Office and the transfer station and the library and stood outside and chatted with people," School Committee chair and Lanesborough resident Christina Conry said. "I believe Ursula [Maloy] was able to attend the big tag sale the town has for its scholarship fund. We've been trying to get the word out on our end.

 

"Lanesborough doesn't have the same community center to grab a ton of people all at once, so it's been challenging in that way. Then there's social media and all those groups as well."

 

At several points during Thursday's meeting, Conry took the opportunity to encourage attendance at the annual town meeting in her community

 

In other business on Thursday, McCandless reported on a video conference for superintendents throughout the commonwealth hosted by the commissioner of education on cell phones in schools.

 

McCandless said a recent story in the Boston Globe may have led some people to believe the commonwealth was looking to institute a statewide ban.

 

"A couple of hundred of us heard right from the commissioner's mouth that that is a very unlikely outcome," McCandless said. "As we saw through the pandemic and have seen for years and years, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education values local control in the same way the rest of the commonwealth's government values local control."

 

McCandless said DESE is soliciting input from public school districts about approaches they have used to address potential abuse of cell phones in the schools. He cited teachers at Mount Greylock who use a "low tech" solution of requiring students to deposit their phones in a pocket at the front of the classroom when they enter and pick them up as they leave.

 

"I think there's an opportunity here as we've been doing since cell phones became more ubiquitous in schools to try to approach this in a very respectful, very thoughtful, educational way, rather than a simple ban or buying a device that takes away all functionality of a mobile phone," McCandless said. "Speaking as somebody who was the superintendent, once upon a time, of all three of my childrens' school … sometimes things happen from a safety perspective or a family perspective that, to some degree, it would feel disrespectful to both our students and the people in homes supporting them to take such a broad brush approach as to simply say, 'No.' "

 

Also on Thursday, the School Committee reached a significant milestone with its vote to execute general obligation bonds to provide the final financing for the middle-high school addition/renovation project.

 

"That was the final vote of the Mount Greylock Regional School building project ever … the final of maybe thousands that have happened," Business Administrator Joe Bergeron mentioned after the vote. "It's remarkable how much blood, sweat and tears it takes to construct a building."

 

Carolyn Greene took the opportunity to recognize two of the many volunteers who helped bring the project to fruition: Mark Schiek and Paula Consolini, who co-chaired the district's School Building Committee.