Letter: Cease Fire Resolution Proposal

Letter to the Editor06:00PM / Thursday, March 14, 2024Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

I add my voice to those asserting that the Select Board should NOT support the cease fire resolution. Several writers before me have enumerated many well-reasoned arguments against involvement of our local governance in such a controversial issue.

I come at the question from a somewhat different angle. I have asked the Select Board on numerous occasions to cite the source(s) from which they have authority to comment as a board on articles not strictly related to Williamstown issues. Does the authority come from the Williamstown charter? The Massachusetts General Laws? Case law? Where? If the SB or anyone has responded to my inquiry, I have missed it.

Should not the authority issue be settled before we even get to the merits of the resolution? Our town governance with its town meeting is touted as being a citizen-friendly model for legislative democracy. Is it? Look closely at some of our seemingly democratic citizens' petitions.

In recent Williamstown history, two articles were touted by proponents as being "passed unanimously." "Passed unanimously" at the end of a very uncomfortable town meeting when many participants had already left is factually translated as 222 votes out of a population of many thousands. This is democracy? Were even a healthy minority of voices heard? Would these articles have passed if put to a vote in the privacy of a voting booth?

Furthermore, proponents interpreted the passage of these article as a mandate. The result was a huge amount — some say "well over a million dollars" — to support institutions and promote programs that many found morally offensive —even seriously at odds with — their religious beliefs. This is democracy?

Town meeting may seem democratic. Those who carefully reviewed the Williamstown Charter deserve our thanks and appreciation for a grueling task well done. But, particularly in light of vast improvements in communicating, more can be done to ensure that many voices who wish to be heard are indeed heard.

The iBerkshire coverage of Monday's SB meeting was replete with words of passion. "I will never forgive you." Speaking and acting "from the heart" was encouraged. Passion certainly has a place in politics, but should passion without prudence guide us? Should feelings trump thought, even in local politics?

What does the Williamstown community want? Many opponents of recent Williamstown policies and practices have been strangely silent. Do we want a small group of albeit-elected officials to speak for us on matters of morality, even religion? Is solidarity a good thing? Can there be room for diversity in solidarity?

And to those who have been and still are fearful to speak, please know you have ample support to freely speak your minds. And even your hearts a bit if you so choose. You might even learn that your silence has been and is unwarranted because you really are the majority.

Donna Carlstrom Wied
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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