CHESHIRE, Mass. — The steering committee for a regional study on secondary education is getting the word out to participating communities and asking for input. 

 

Members of the North Berkshire Educational Sustainability Study spoke to the Cheshire Board of Selectmen last week and to the North Adams City Council on Tuesday.  

 

The goal of the study is to focus on Grades 6 through 12 to understand current conditions across districts, hear people on their educational priorities, analyze strengths, opportunities, and challenges, and identify opportunities for future collaboration.

 

Steering Committee Chair Erin Milne, also a member of the Hoosac Valley Regional School Committee, introduced the study and why it was needed.

 

"We've been talking for decades about how the Northern Berkshire school communities can better collaborate with one another, rather than necessarily duplicating services," she told he Cheshire board. "And over time, it's become more and more of a pressing issue as our enrollment has been going down, but costs have been going up." 

 

Hoosac Valley, North Adams, Mount Greylock Regional, Clarksburg, Savoy and Florida are participating in the study. A combination of declining population and rising costs are putting pressure on the districts, but the study will also look at educational opportunities that could come from collaboration. 

 

In North Adams, Superintendent of Schools Timothy Callahan noted that "the reality is that in the North Adams Public Schools, our graduating class is now closer to what Lenox used to have as a graduating class 20 years ago ... So those are the realities, and what can we sustain, and what are the educational opportunities for our young people? Those are the questions that we're asking."

 

This first phase of the study is being funded through a $100,000 state earmark from the Fair Share Act obtained by state Rep. John Barrett III. Berkshire Educational Resources K-12, or Berk12, has been hired as the study consultant; the organization is an outgrowth of the countywide education task force organization.

 

Phase 2 will be looking at the data and determining options; Phase 3 would be taking the determination, if any, and moving it into reality.

 

Milne said they had started meeting last year with schools to help formalize a collaboration — but before they can collaborate they need to learn more about what's happening. 

 

"We really need to learn about what is really happening in our schools, and we need to learn about the community's perception of what our schools are doing, and also what the community's appetite is for potentially making changes going forward," she said.

 

Berk12 researcher Brendan Sheran explained that baseline data, facility conditions, and school performance data would be gathered over the next several months including community outreach across the four districts. He said the total study runs 10 to 12 months, and that they are currently in months four to six. Final reports are expected to be given around May.

 

He added that there will be a mix of report they will be able to dive into including; separate reports on enrollment including trends, school choice, projections; education report including outcomes, programs, class size; finance reports including spending, and Chapter 70, staffing reports including licensure, recruitment, retention, and operations/governance, with community-engagement findings threaded across all of them. Community engagement with the process through surveys and forums will be critical to analyzing the data. 

 

"One of the most frequent conversations that I had with folks was, 'Oh, I don't have a student in the schools right now, so this doesn't really affect me,'" said Milne. "But that's not the the hope that we have for this study, both because community members who pay taxes are very much affected by what's happening in the schools through the tax levies, but also because the community depends on those schools, even if they don't have students themselves, to make an educated populace and to build community, and they're really important drivers of the community."

 

Project Director Jake Eberwein, a former school superintendent, emphasized in North Adams that a survey will be released to North County communities in the next week. 

 

"We really encourage folks respond to the survey. We'll be marketing it through the media, through social media, through direct mail, through the school districts, a lot of different ways, but we really that's one of our biggest data sets because it helps us to hear from the community," he told the North Adams councilors. "It doesn't it doesn't make any sense to come up with solutions that people don't like."

 

Cheshire Town Administrator Jennifer Morse said she is familiar with Berk12's work and that its surveys are very well thought out after participating in the study for the Mohawk Trail Regional School District, adding that she will get the word out.

 

"This is really kind of a unique thing," said Councilor Peter Breen, a member of the steering committee, on Tuesday, comparing it to explorers Lewis and Clark. "This is long-term planning. We're in an area where the population is dropping, and we have a situation where we have young people that need to get educated, and we want to do it the best way we can, and kind of putting all our heads together."

 

iBerkshires covers the steering committee's meetings; find our articles here.