Great Barrington — The new academic year for students in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District will begin on Monday, August 29.
The school district, which serves Great Barrington, Stockbridge, and West Stockbridge, comprises Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School, W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School, and Monument Mountain Regional High School.
Teachers, staff, and students are all looking forward to the new school year, according to Superintendent Peter Dillon.
“This should be a great time for everyone,” Dillon told The Berkshire Edge. “We’re going to have about 1,200 students in the district. It’s a slight increase from last year although we had a very big graduating class from Monument Mountain. We’re going to fill some of the classroom seats with children from families that are moving into the community, and also school-choice students.”
Dillon said that the most important initiative this school year is for the school district to help students and families “make sense” of the pandemic.
“We have pretty clear data that young people are feeling a little more anxiety and depression right now than when we went into the pandemic,” Dillon said. “Supporting their mental health and well-being is a big initiative. There is a challenge in coming back to school after being disconnected due to the pandemic. Last school year was a pretty typical year, but the year before really was not. The things that our students thrive on, including extracurricular activities and sports, were all taking place on a very limited basis due to the pandemic. That made people feel a little fragile. Then there’s the economic insecurity everybody is dealing with. And in some cases, families are dealing with food insecurity. It feels like everybody’s on eggshells because of all of this.”
Dillon said that, to help out children’s emotional needs, all of the schools will have an advisory program where teachers will connect to students to help with their social and emotional needs.
“This will include discussions on how students regulate their emotions, how they set plans and goals, along with how they move forward in the world,” Dillon said. “We have been working with the folks at the Yale Child Study Team on that, and they have a very elaborate curriculum.”
Dillon said that the school district will share with parents information to reinforce to their children what they are teaching about mental health.
Dillon explained that another initiative the district plans on working on this year will be to redesign the district’s approach to high school thanks to a $250,000 grant from Boston’s Barr Foundation.
“When you talk about school redesign, people often think that it’s about the physical redesign of a school building,” Dillon said. “Instead, this grant will help us address how we structure what young people are doing in high school. The big thing for us is that our approach to the 9th grade has changed dramatically. We used to put our students into three groups: honors, college prep, and standard. Now we have our students all in one group together. However, now they are all afforded a range of opportunities to demonstrate that they are all doing honors level work, so that is a big shift.”
Dillon said that the district is also changing how students are academically assessed.
“When you and I went to school, we had tests and quizzes,” he said. “Once in a while, you made a presentation. Now students are creating portfolios, presenting to panels, and sometimes they are presenting to peers or people outside of the school district. Sometimes they are sharing things electronically. It’s a much richer way of trying to figure out what they’re learning.”
As for priorities during the school year, Dillon said that school security is high on the list, especially in light of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that took place in May.
“We meet regularly with the Great Barrington Police Department, including Chief Paul Storti, along with representatives of the State Police,” Dillon said. “We conduct a lot of school safety drills and training. We then fine-tune our physical spaces in the best ways that we can. As important as all of this is, we also pay attention to students who are feeling emotionally fragile, feeling harassed, or bullied. We try to intervene before any of that gets too serious.”
For new programs during this school year, Dillon said that the district’s English as a Second Language (ESL) programs are being expanded.
“The big shift this year has been that we have an influx of recent immigrants that have come to the district,” he said. “We brought in a couple of more ESL teachers, and we are trying to have more of an outreach to that subset of our population. We are also adding a new vocational program to our district for early childhood education, where we are partnering with Berkshire Community College.”
Dillon said that while the district is offering two other official vocational programs in automotive and horticulture, the district will also be offering various opportunities in woodworking, manufacturing, and computer business, along with internships for restaurant and hospitality programs.
“Overall, I think that this school year will be a good time to move forward,” Dillon said. “Covid is not gone, but it is now more manageable than it has been. I think the most important thing families should know is that, over the summer, teachers and the staff at our district schools have all been working very hard to prepare for this school year, and we are all super excited to welcome you all back.”
