Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Changes in Cultural Exchange

Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
03:42PM / Friday, August 15, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.— Mount Greylock Regional School Committee approved some changes to the cultural exchange program that the high school’s Spanish teachers have developed with the St. Paul’s School in La Cumbre, Argentina.

The program was originally conceived to have students from each school traveling to the other in alternating years.

Given Mount Greylock’s greater size, it makes more sense if the Argentine students make the trip north every other year while Mount Greylock sends members of its senior class to La Cumbre every year, Joe Johnson, Mount Greylock world language teacher, explained.

That means changing the eligibility of the Mount Greylock students from “juniors and seniors” to seniors only. Mount Greylock students will go to Argentina each spring; St. Paul’s students will make the trip every other autumn.

In addition, Johnson asked that, instead of a program where Mount Greylock students stay in hotels while in La Cumbre, they instead stay with host families, as the Argentine students did when visiting the Berkshires.

“Living with a family changes the experience,” Paula Penelas, St. Paul’s School representative said in the virtual meeting.

“You learn about their habits, customs, conversations, timetable. It’s different.

“We have many, many families who would be delighted to be asked to host. We will choose them very carefully.”

Johnson noted that a change to the host family model also will reduce the cost of travel.

“[The trip] would undoubtedly be a whole lot more doable economically,” he said. “If you’re kicking in to offset your share of meals, hot water and transportation, that’s more doable than staying in a hotel.”

Rather than renting vans to transport the Mount Greylock students to and from their hotel, the host families will provide transportation, as they did for the St. Paul’s students who visited Mount Greylock, he said.

School Committee member Carolyn Greene sought information about the screening process that would be used on both ends for host families and encouraged a more formal process, including, perhaps, a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check for host families locally.

“Our job as School Committee members is to assess risk,” Greene noted.

Johnson said he would be open to talking about more formal screening.

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Williamstown Studying Major Overhaul for Main Street

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:14AM / Wednesday, July 29, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The town is working with a Worcester civil engineering firm to redesign Main Street with an eye toward a major project sometime in the next decade.

Community Development Director Andrew Groff was before the Select Board on Monday night to talk about Town Hall's use of a $500,000 state grant to do preliminary design on major improvements to that portion of Route 2 that runs from Water Street west to the Field Park rotary, through the middle of Williams College's campus.

Groff introduced the elected officials to Amanda Bazinet of Worcester's Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, who is helping the town to develop a plan for Main Street that would align with the commonwealth's Complete Streets Program.

"Our project goals, in addition to the increased pedestrian and bicycle accommodations, is just, in general, improving the sightlines and improving the intersection geometry," Bazinet said.

"Complete Streets … has a lot of different facets to it. As Andrew had mentioned, the goal is to improve the safety for all of the roadway users — not just the motorists. We're looking at improving it for pedestrians, bicyclists, anyone using a mobility device. We want to create streets that are safe for all ages and abilities to use. So, while bicyclists will still be allowed, legally, to use the roadway, we want to look at providing a separate bicycle accommodation along the corridor, whether it's a shared use path along both sides of the streets that is a little more accessible to young children or older people with disabilities to look at all transportation options."

One goal is to encourage "active transportation." The Massachusetts Department of Transportation, who the town hopes one day might fund the construction, has a "healthy transportation policy," Bazinet said.

That MassDOT funding would come through the Transportation Improvement Program, which is managed locally by the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. The design work underway now is being done with an eye toward going after TIP funding years down the road.

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