Letter: Vote Markey for Senate

Letter to the Editor04:05PM / Thursday, October 23, 2025Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

Recently, we learned that frequent Berkshire visitor, U.S. Senator Ed Markey, has another Democratic challenger. Last time it was Rep. Joe Kennedy. This time it's Rep. Seth Moulton. [Alex Rikleen of Acton, a former teacher, is also running.]

I'm not against primaries, but as WBUR in Boston said: "Moulton is running on age, but what else?" Joe Kennedy had the same platform — and Massachusetts voters rejected him.

It seems to me a candidate's age is irrelevant if he's doing the job, and Ed Markey is doing his job. Very well, in fact. As I said, he's no stranger to the Berkshires, and he's fighting Trump's fascist policies in Washington every single day.

He is also the Senate author of the Green New Deal, and his progressive policies have led to widespread support among young voters. The online publication The Hill has called him "an icon to Gen Z activists."

But there's another reason I oppose internecine Democratic warfare this year. The Trump administration is posing the biggest threat to our democracy and our freedoms since the Civil War, and we should be devoting our precious time, energy, and money to that fight, not expending it on primary elections where a candidate's age is the only issue.

This is a nation on the brink. We have serious problems, and we need serious people to deal with them. Senator Ed Markey is serious. That's why he has my vote.

Lee Harrison
Williamstown, Mass.

Tags: election 2025, municipal election,

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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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