CHESHIRE, Mass. — The Hoosac Valley School Committee got an update Monday on the North Berkshire Education Sustainability Study, now two months into its yearlong process.

 

This was the first school committee presentation, with the second planned for the North Adams School Committee on Tuesday. The Steering Committee will meet publicly at Mount Greylock Regional School on Wednesday at 5 p.m.

 

The study is investigating the state of secondary education in North Berkshire, its challenges and potential restructuring. It covers Hoosac Valley, North Adams Public Schools, Mount Greylock and the Northern Berkshire School Union.

 

Jake Eberwein, project lead with consultant Berk12, explained that baseline data would gathered over the next several months including through community forums to be held in late fall.

 

"We're not here to audit or evaluate," said Eberwein. "Our goal is to collect, curate and share it. Of course, there's always a process where, as a researcher, you have to decide how to share it and organize it, and that can certainly have a bias in itself. We're going to do our best and work with the subcommittees."

 

The data will include New Ashford and Hancock because even though they are not participating in the study, they tuition their students to North Berkshire schools, but not Rowe because it sends its high school students to Mohawk Trail Regional School.

 

"The charge really is to evaluate sort of the long-term sustainability option for the four districts that are involved in the project," Eberwein said. "It's really mostly about how do we provide the best quality, highest quality education for students in Northern Berkshire County, in light of the fact that there are some pressures: shifting enrollments, demographic shifts, and ongoing fiscal pressures."

 

The study will organize the data as enrollment, education, finance, staffing, operations and governance. It will also include a look at past historical attempts to collaborate led by Robert Putnam, a retired Hoosac superintendent.

 

The timeline has a survey going out in the next few weeks; focus groups this fall with educators, students (including recent graduates) and community members; community forums happening in November and early December, and baseline reports being completed in the new year. These will be submitted to committees and community for further review before a final report with possible next steps is released in the spring.

 

The second phase would be testing favorable solutions — which would be bid out again or taken up by a steering committee — and the third phase, should it get that far, would be development of a preferred solution, moving forward on legal and regulatory issues, and seeking town approval as needed.

 

School Committee member Erin Milne, chair of the study's Steering Committee, said because there are so many towns involved, the Steering Committee should be advising those separate school committees.

 

"Then the school committees will be the ones who put forward the official whatever needs to be decided," she said. "So instead of coming from the collaborative steering committee, it'll come from each of the four schools."

 

Committee members discussed how best to get out information about the forums, including how each school could host a gathering, how to have smaller presentations for groups and how to engage local leaders and stakeholders. Chair Fred Lora suggested members go to their respective select boards to raise awareness of the forums and request they participate.

 

Eberwein noted that change was already happening within the school systems, pointing to the update by shared Hoosac/Drury Athletic Director Jeffery Puleri on cooperative teams.

 

"It's just really a matter of how we best organize that makes sense keeping your local identify intact while you're also sort of planning for the future," he said.

 

Puleri had given his athletic update first, noting "today was the first official day of fall practice. Our numbers have been better than expected, which is great to hear."

 

Turnout for several sports was up with volleyball "a monster," he said.

 

Initial surveys had pointed to 20-25 possible players for volleyball, hosted at Drury, but 52 students turned up, half or more Hoosac students.

 

"I have somewhat been on record stating with the students and parents that I think Hoosac Valley strongly needs to consider its own volleyball team moving forward," Puleri said.

 

Hoosac is hosting the co-op football team with 42 students from Hoosac, Drury and Mount Greylock. This should allow the schools to field both a varsity and junior varsity team.

 

Girls soccer had 25 signups and was "teetering on the edge" of fielding a JV program; boys soccer was dropped for lack of interest and is being hosted by Drury this year, with 30 students total, allowing for a JV program.

 

"If those numbers stay where they are or grow a little bit, we'll bring that program back as early as next year," he said.

 

The school's hosting cheer with 12 to 15 girls; two students are running cross country at McCann Technical School; and golf has 10 students, with Hoosac's two being very beginners. The unified team at Drury will have around 10 Hoosac students.

 

In other business, the committee discussed updates from subcommittees, approved transfer of funds to close out fiscal 2026, and welcomed new middle school Principal Dwayne Chamble. During subcommittee reports, member Robert Tetlow suggested the committee get a report card at the end of each marking period on progress in various areas. Assistant Superintendent Kristen Palatt thought it a good idea and very doable. 

 

The committee approved an LED lighting project for the two school buildings. Superintendent Aaron Dean said Mass Save walked through the elementary, middle and high schools and recommended switching over. The renovated high has a lot of LEDs but the drivers are out of date and can't be replaced. Through the program, the district will receive a savings right off the top and then be billed in the monthly bill. 

 

"We're fortunate enough to have a solar array out here that's covering an amount of credits for us to use, as well as another solar array that we're a member of that we have built credits," he said. "So essentially, we can finance this for three years and use credit to pay for the whole thing. So we're not we're not paying a penny from the school at this point in time."

 

Former School Committee member Adam Emerson will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Association of School Committee at a dinner on Nov. 6. The award honors "individuals who, through their service to their community and their local school committee, have exhibited the best characteristics of public service.

 

Emerson was first elected to represent Cheshire on the School Committee in 2017 and appears to be the first member from either Adams or Cheshire to receive the honor.