Williamstown Seniors Evacuated After Sprinkler Malfunction

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
03:13PM / Tuesday, February 04, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Several residents of the Highland Woods senior apartments were relocated overnight Monday after a malfunction in the sprinkler system caused water damage in three units, a representative of the management company said on Tuesday.

Kristin Coyne, the director of portfolio operations for Hearthway, said the first emergency calls came in at about 10 p.m. Monday.

"Those residents were moved to a hotel for the time being," Coyne said on Tuesday afternoon.

"We haven't gotten much information [about the cause of the leak]. The first goal is to get things corrected and get people squared away and then do more research to figure out the cause with the Board of Health, the Fire Department and our vendors."

Coyne said it is not known whether the malfunction was related to issues that caused a five-month delay in the opening portions of the 40-unit complex when it opened in 2016.

Highland Woods was the result of a public-private partnership involving Williams College, which donated the property off the north end of Southworth Street, and the town, which contributed about $2.8 million. The majority of that funding, $2.6 million, was from the proceeds of a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that enabled the town to purchase the former Spruces Mobile Home Park from owner Morgan Management. The town's Affordable Housing Trust and Community Preservation Committee also contributed to the project.

FEMA funded the town's acquisition to facilitate the closing of the Main Street mobile home park after Tropical Storm Irene.

Highland Woods, built by Berkshire Housing Development Corp. (now known as Hearthway), was seen by town leaders and the college as a way to replace the housing lost when the Spruces was closed.

Coyne said Tuesday that Hearthway has insurance to cover the cost of the building and encourages its residents to have renter's insurance to cover damage to their personal property.

She did not offer a guess as to when those residents affected can safely return to their homes.

"Our team and external vendors are working on it throughout the day today," Coyne said. "Information is pretty minimal at this point. The most important thing is it's being corrected and our residents are safe."

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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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