Mass Cultural Council Awards Milne Public Library a Creative Experiences Grant

10:42AM / Thursday, April 02, 2026Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The David and Joyce Milne Public Library was awarded a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to host a Cultural Showcase this Spring.

Creative Experiences "offers grants to organizations (including schools) to fund festivals, projects, residencies, and other cultural activities" (Mass Cultural Council). With the awarded funds of $5,000 and support from the Friends of the David and Joyce Milne Public Library, the Cultural Showcase will celebrate the cultural backgrounds represented in Williamstown and across Berkshire County. The goal is to create a welcoming space for connection and learning through food, art, language, music, storytelling, and cultural traditions.

The Cultural Showcase is scheduled for Saturday, May 30, 2026, 11:00 a.m. through 3:00 p.m. at the Milne Public Library located at 1095 Main Street, Williamstown, MA 01267. The showcase will feature more than 20 Berkshire organizations where attendees are encouraged to "Explore the world in a day" through food, music, dance, crafts, and more.

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Mount Greylock School Committee Hears 'Remarkable' MCAS Data

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
04:54AM / Tuesday, October 13, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Thursday heard that students across the district showed significant growth in their performance on the commonwealth's spring 2026 round of standardized testing.

Superintendent Joe Bergeron and committee member Curtis Elfenbein offered the panel its first look at the results of the most recent Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests.

"One thing I do want to say is that many people can look at scores and see them in a vacuum and think the score is the thing," Elfenbein said. "But in an academic setting, there's performance and then there's growth. And over the last decade or so of my teaching career, there was a massive shift toward an increase in focus on growth."

Elfenbein explained that the "student growth percentile" in MCAS reporting measures how an individual student performs in a given year relative to students who got the same score on a given test (mathematics or English language arts) in the prior year.

"So Timmy and Joanny each get 75 percent of the questions right on the fifth grade ELA MCAS," Elfenbein said. "Then they take the sixth grade ELA MCAS, and whoever improves on their score more gets a higher student growth percentile."

An SGP of 50 percent means that a student showed typical growth relative to his or her peers.

And in that measure of growth, Elfenbein said the district's results are "remarkable."

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