WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A Mount Greylock Regional School District committee is working to ensure that the three public schools provide healthier food options for students and staff.

 

The co-chair of the district's Wellness Committee gave a report to the School Committee at its Thursday meeting, outlining the wellness group's priorities for the year ahead.

 

Joelle Brookner told the elected officials that a group of 16 people representing staff, district families, students from the middle-high school and the administration had met three times as of the School Committee's April 9 meeting.

 

Job one for the Wellness Committee has been to use tools from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to look at the district's current policy, and her panel will be making recommendations to the School Committee's Policy and Governance Subcommittee for amendments to bring to the full committee in the near future.

 

At the same time, Brookner said the Wellness Committee asked its own members what their priorities are for improving the schools.

 

"We had a pretty good range of what people are interested in, and we asked people to rank the top three categories that need the most attention,"Brookner said. "Those were, in this order: school meal programming, nutrition and food system education and social and emotional climate and caregiver engagement.

 

"That's going to be the focus of our work this year."

 

Superintendent Joseph Bergeron said Brookner is taking the lead on writing grant applications to help the district follow through on some of those areas of focus.

 

"The focus in FY27 by DESE happens to be food and food system education and things like funding trips to local farms," Bergeron said. "So we've been reaching out to local farms and considering teacher interest and seeing how we can line up an application that speaks to our needs and the local farm economy.

 

"No. 2, through our conversations with the Wellness Committee, we identified that two of our three schools have flourishing salad bar efforts during lunch. One does not. That one is Williamstown Elementary School. So we found a salad bar grant that was open, and we put in our application for it."

 

If the latter grant comes through, Bergeron said that a salad bar at WES could be up and running as soon as this fall.

 

Bergeron said the district's food services director is looking to build on the schools' existing efforts to source from local farms and combine purchasing power with neighboring institutions.

 

"Tammy Jennings has led a couple of new vendor purchasing group opportunities DESE has out where we're looking to band together with other K-12 systems and local colleges to try to do more with local food procurement," Bergeron said.

 

"In terms of acquiring food from local farms, we realized there are a number of initiatives already underway. We're talking about how we could promote those, and we have a new vendor relationship that just kicked off a few weeks ago that will be part of that promotion."

 

Brookner on Thursday also brought the School Committee up to date in another area being planned for the 2026-27 school year professional development for faculty.

 

She said a lot of that work will come in the form of creating time for teachers to collaborate during the school day, as described in the FY27 priorities delivered to the School Committee by the three School Councils this winter.

 

Training opportunities for faculty will include continued instruction in the district's recently adopted i-Ready math curriculum and Orton-Gillingham reading and writing method for special education teachers.

 

In house, the district's teachers will be working on greater alignment between grade levels in writing instruction, a long recognized area of need for the K-12 district, and development of guidelines around the use of artificial intelligence that were called for by the School Committee's recently adopted policy on AI.

 

The district's teachers also will continue to work on building "relational discipline" strategies to promote social-emotional wellness and engage in Crisis Prevention Institute training to develop de-escalation skills.

 

After reviewing the PD plan for the coming year, School Committee Chair Julia Bowen asked whether the district might be asking for too much professional development from faculty expected to complete it while meeting their day-to-day obligations in the classroom.

 

"It is one of the greatest challenges in education right now," Bergeron said. "This year was the big, initial mountain climb with a new math curriculum for our K-8 teachers. Next year, the lift will decrease a little bit, but we're also layering in writing instruction focus. Across the entire district, relational discipline is becoming a much-more frequently cited, 'I need more time, I need more experience, I need more expertise.'

 

"Figuring out how to have that be positive instead of detrimental or overwhelming is a real challenge."

 

Bergeron and Brookner told the committee that while some teachers may be involved in two or three of the professional development programs outlined to the committee, nobody is expected to work in all those programs simultaneously.

 

"I would say that the elementary schools — at the upper grade levels — have started to departmentalize a bit more," Brookner said. "So if someone is heavily involved with iReady math, they wouldn't be as heavily involved in the writing at the beginning. We're very conscious of not overwhelming people."

 

In other business on Thursday, the School Committee discussed the reception that the FY27 district budget received from the Finance Committees in both member towns and the Select Board in Lanesborough, which met jointly with the Fin Comm.

 

The budget approved by the School Committee last month translates to a 13.61 percent increase in the assessment to Williamstown and a 10.99 percent increase to Lanesborough.

 

Bergeron said the meetings were "collegial" and went "better than I expected."

 

"At the end of each meeting, we had an understanding that it's a big ask, but let's move forward," Bergeron said.

 

Carolyn Greene, who has been through more budget discussions with town officials than any other member of the School Committee, sounded cautiously optimistic about the level of town support for the budget that will be put to annual town meeting members in Williamstown next month and in Lanesborough in June.

 

"No one said, ‘Good job, guys, but, no, we can't support this,' " Greene said. "It's a little bit unsettling, honestly, that they haven't said, ‘We're happy to support this.' And we don't know what to expect at either town meeting at this point.

 

"The main thing is for people who choose to support the schools during this challenging time to come to town meeting and vote. Presence is going to be really important, just like it was with the school building project, just like it was with other difficult budget votes. We hope this is an unusual year, and if people come to town meeting — either one — uneducated about what's behind this, it's going to be a tough sell."

 

To that end, the School Committee members discussed mounting an education campaign this spring that will include circulation and promotion of an FAQ document, a question-and-answer segment filmed for distribution on the public, education and government (PEG) television stations in both towns and seeking opportunities for one-on-one meetings between residents of each towns and members of the School Committee and the School Councils.

 

Bergeron said that the advocacy and fund-raising group FS4WES is organizing childcare opportunities at Williamstown Elementary School during the May 19 annual town meeting to allow parents of school-age children to attend the 7 p.m. meeting.