Community Feedback Essential During Ed Collaborative
CHESHIRE, Mass. — Ensuring everyone's voices are heard will be a constant during all stages of exploring secondary education collaborative efforts to achieve long-term sustainability in North Berkshire.
Hoosac Valley Regional School District Superintendent Aaron Dean presented an update to at the Select Board last meeting of 2025 on the collaboration to pool resources and explore the possibility of regionalizing the three high schools and the elementary districts in the North Berkshire School Union.
"I think it's something that we have to make sure we bring everybody's voice to the table and bring everybody's concerns to the table through this, so we do it the right way and we don't have a bad taste in people's mouths as we go and take those next steps," he said.
"The communities have learned from some history, unfortunately, on how things have gone. So, I think we have to be mindful of that and kind of make sure that there's a high level of engagement as we go through the process."
NBSU, Hoosac Valley, North Adams Public Schools and the Mount Greylock Regional School District are in the initial stages of the initiative that may take three to five years to complete, he said.
"It's really looking at what are some models, and maybe even what are some different models of regionalization that the communities could utilize, that might be most effective in terms of providing opportunities for kids," Dean said.
With a $100,000 state grant that Dean referred to as "seed money," the task force has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to hire a consultant. The bids are due by 4 p.m. on Jan. 20. The resulting study will guide next steps with the goal of maximizing funding and resources while reducing pressure on communities.
"I'm not sure that that's going to be enough for the broad scope that we have. We'll see when we get some proposals in," Dean said.
If the funding is not enough, the scope will have to be narrowed or other funding resources will have to be found, he said.
During this fiscal cycle with the state, there has been a lot of advocacy to get money into the "191 accounts," which the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education uses to support school district regionalization efforts, shared services, or undertake other cost-saving and efficiency projects.
There are a lot of unknowns at the moment including what the best model for collaboration would be, whether its regionalization or shared services, how regionalization would shift demographics, the optimal size and structure of a regional district, and how it would affect grant and funding opportunities.
"I do think, at the end of the day, that it's not going to be a huge cost savings for anybody, because it's expensive … but I do think we'll get more for our money in certain ways," Dean said, demonstrating how the high schools have low enrollment rates and regionalization could reduce duplicate programs.
"If we can put all of those students into one building, we don't have duplicate pieces and that does become more efficient, but your transportation might be more because you're going to have one building instead of instead of two."
Regionalization would increase transportation costs because students are going to one school instead of three. However, regional districts get reimbursement for transportation and get more grant opportunities because it's larger, he said.
The first of many committees was established to interpret the findings of the study. The steering committee will have four representatives from each entity, including two Adams representatives and two Cheshire representatives.
"This steering committee will take that first phase with the study and figure out the next steps are. As we get closer, we're going to form another committee, which will have to be a statutory committee in order to take the final step …," Dean said.
"That group will take it to the finish line in terms of making the decisions, getting the policies in place, getting the contracts in place, and all of those pieces."
Dean said on Monday that the district has two candidates plus School Committee Chair Erin Milne. It is in need of one more person with the hope to finalize the appointments at the Jan. 12 School Committee meeting.
This is a three-phase approach to study, get a recommended focus, and go deeper into details before the communities make a final decision, he said.
"If you regionalize, then you have a committee that's going to take it to the finish line, which is probably a solid three to five years, depending on how everything lays out," he said.
One interesting thing is finding out how the demographics of the district would change because Hoosac Valley Regional School District is two-thirds high needs and 60 percent low income.
"If we're combining, what's that going to do with demographics and what does that do to certain thresholds for student opportunity act funds and certain things like that," Dean said.
"That's why you get somebody that knows the business, knows the formulas to give you numbers. So you're making informed decisions."
Tags: education task force,
