WEST STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — School officials in the Southern Berkshire and Berkshire Hills Regional School Districts are hoping voters in their member towns will make history later this month.

 

It is the best way those officials can see to ensure the future of the region's students.

 

Later this month, voters in eight South County towns will be asked whether they want to merge the area's two regional school districts, creating one preK-12 district to educate youngsters in the eight communities and, ultimately, one new high school to replace the current Mount Everett and Monument Mountain high schools.

 

The votes at eight special town meetings will be the culmination of a study that began in March 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and continued through months of public Zoom meetings and in-depth analysis by education professionals.

 

A positive vote in all eight towns would trigger the merger and break new ground in Massachusetts.

 

"This has never happened before in the commonwealth, two regional school districts merging," 8 Town Regional School District Planning Board Chair Lucy Prashker told a small crowd at Town Hall on Tuesday night. "If we do that, we'll be the first in the state.

 

"We also were the first in the state in the 1950s to form a regional school district, Berkshire Hills. We've done it before, so we can do it again."

 

Prashker joined Jake Eberwein, a consultant to the board, for a 90-minute information session about the merger proposal, the latest in a series of public events to inform voters prior to the special town meetings.

 

The RSDPB plans similar presentations on Wednesday in Sheffield, Saturday in Alford and Wednesday, Oct. 18, at Monument Mountain in Great Barrington.

 

The forum started with an explanation of the issues facing both school districts — and districts throughout Berkshire County, for that matter — declining enrollment, rising costs per student and a state aid regime that keeps funding from Boston relatively flat and shifts and increasing share of school costs onto local property taxpayers.

 

Adding to all those challenges is an aging and inefficient Monument Mountain high school that officials have for years hoped to find a way to renovate or replace.

 

Advocates of a merger argue that it will help create cost savings through greater efficiency and that state incentives for regionalization will mean more aid to help build a new high school on the Great Barrington campus than would be available to the Berkshire Hills district if it built the project on its own.

But the main sales pitch at Tuesday's meeting was not about dollars and cents but what makes sense for providing the best education possible for the districts' students.

 

"What you see there is, for totals, the two districts, as a group, are each better off [financially] with a merger than without a merger," Prashker said, indicating one of the slides shown during the presentation. "It's not huge. But we're not doing it just to achieve [fiscal savings].

 

"As one member of the committee has said, our 'North Star' has always been educational benefits and opportunities the merger will bring. The fact that we can achieve those economies of scale and efficiencies of $1.2 million to $1.8 million certainly helps."

 

Those figures refer to the projected savings in operating expenses for the merged district during its initial year of operation, currently projected for fiscal year 2027. Going from one high school to two will create redundancies in administration and teaching staff that the RSDPB argues will be achieved through attrition rather than reductions in force.

 

Some or all of the projected $1.2 to $1.8 million in savings could be returned to local taxpayers or invested in educational programs, Eberwein said. And merger advocates recognize that the new district will bring a large capital commitment from the voters in the member towns.

 

The proposed regional agreement includes a provision that nullifies a successful October 2023 merger vote, "Should the Member Towns fail to approve the debt for the New High School by June 30, 2025." And that bonding vote would add to the new regional school district's capital costs, but according to the regional agreement, 90 percent of the capital costs for a new high school would apportioned to the current Berkshire Hills member towns; just 10 percent would go to the five towns in the current Southern Berkshire Regional School District.

 

Meanwhile, the newly formed district would mitigate the impact of continued enrollment declines at the two current districts that, left unchecked, will continue to drive up the cost per student ahead of the rate of inflation.

 

"It seems like this is not a cost-reduction strategy as much as a cost-avoidance strategy," an attendee at the meeting suggested.

 

"I would agree with that," said Eberwein, a former principal and superintendent in Pittsfield and current member of the Central Berkshire Regional School District School Committee.

 

From an education standpoint, the merger will allow the new district to offer more robust programs.

 

"As these enrollment declines happen, we have limited opportunities to offer our students a broad range of programs and support — support in English language learning, support in special education, support in social/emotional needs and things like that," Prashker said.

 

By contrast, the new — yet to be named — high school that would replace Monument Mountain and Mount Everett could offer more academic electives than the student population at either current school supports and up to six Chapter 74 Career Vocational Technical Education programs.

 

Currently, the Great Barrington school offers CVTE programs in automotive, horticulture and early childhood care. Mount Everett in Sheffield offers no Chapter 74 programs.

 

"When we looked at vocational education county wide, in North County, about 25 percent of the kids are in Chapter 74 programs," Eberwein said. "In Central County, they're at about 20 percent, and that's a jump with Taconic going fully vocational.

 

"In South County, it was under 5 percent of your kids in Chapter 74 programs. That led to the obvious conclusion that that was an area of need in South County."

 

About 10 members of the public attended the presentation in the town hall gymnasium with more people tuning in to a livestream of the event.

 

The panelists faced a number of questions, ranging from inquiries about the timeline (a new high school likely won't be ready to occupy until the 2028-29 academic year if all goes well) to how many elementary schools the new district will have (all current elementary schools and the middle schools in Great Barrington and Sheffield will remain operational under the plan).

 

Southern Berkshire RSD currently operates elementary schools in Sheffield and New Marlborough plus a pre-K facility in South Egremont. The Berkshire Hills district operates a single elementary school in Great Barrington.

 

Under the proposed regional agreement, any school closure would come only after a feasibility study, a two-thirds vote of the new 11-person school committee (with residents from six of the eight member towns voting in favor) and an affirmative vote in at least six of the eight member towns.

 

The new Southern Berkshire Hills Regional School District School Committee would include three residents of Great Barrington, two from Sheffield and one each from the other six member towns, Alford, Egremont, Monterey, New Marlborough, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge.

 

The last question on the floor Tuesday addressed the possibility that the proposed merger is scuttled this month by an unsuccessful vote in one of the eight towns.

 

"I get asked that question a lot," Prashker said. "That question is interesting given that the town of Egremont decided to hold its special town meeting two days before all the others. It's really important that, no matter what happens in Egremont, everyone go to their special town meeting and vote."

 

Prashker said if the vote is unsuccessful in any town, the RSDPB could ask the towns for a revote, perhaps with an amended regional agreement that addresses any issues raised during the special town meetings.

 

And, there is another option.

 

"[One] thing to consider is the possibility of forming a seven-town new region rather than eight," Prashker said. "It's complicated, and you would have to work through the [existing] regional agreements. But it's certainly something to consider."

 

At the eight special town meetings, residents will cast their votes by paper ballot. The meetings are scheduled as follows: Egremont, Oct. 21, at 10 a.m. at Mount Everett Regional School; Alford, Oct. 23, 6 p.m. at the Alford Fire House; Great Barrington, Oct. 23, 6 p.m. at Monument Mountain Regional High School; Monterey, Oct. 23, 6 p.m. at Monterey Fire House; New Marlborough, Oct. 23, 6 p.m. at New Marlborough Fire House; Sheffield, Oct. 23, 6 p.m. at Mount Everett Regional High School; Stockbridge, Oct. 23, 6 p.m., at Town Hall; West Stockbridge, Oct. 23, 6 p.m. at Town Hall. More information on the proposed merger, including charts and graphs with financial data and projections is available on the RSDPB's website, 8towns.org.