GREAT BARRINGTON — The future reconstruction of Monument Mountain Regional High School offers an opportunity for two neighboring school districts to merge or consolidate operations and address a critical need for vocational education, a consultant for a panel exploring a merger said last night.
Consultant Kenneth Rocke told the Eight-Town Regional Planning Board that the application before the state school building authority to rebuild Monument “offers a unique opportunity to advance” career vocational technical education (CVTE) in southern Berkshire County by incorporating related facilities into the new high school.
Rocke said a new high school that includes programs listed in Chapter 74, a state law governing vocational education, could “maximize” state funding for the new building, “achieve sustainable scale” and offer clear educational benefits. Click here to view a recent draft of Rocke’s report (the final version presented last night was not yet available at publication time).
See Edge video below of last night’s meeting of the Eight-Town Regional Planning Board:
“While many schools have reconfigured over the last several decades to meet the demands of high-stakes testing, resulting in a college-for-all mindset, not all students are on a college preparatory track,” Rocke said. “Thus introducing students to career pathways as early as possible — during the middle school years — ensures that all students receive an appropriate education that prepares them for college, career, and an engaged life.”
Rocke’s report took up the better part of the second half of a two-and-a-half-hour meeting of the eight-town board, formed in 2019 and representing member municipalities that comprise the Berkshire Hills and Southern Berkshire regional school districts.
Before Rocke delivered his eye-opening report, lead consultant Jake Eberwein examined the compatibility of the two districts. Berkshire Hills comprises the towns of Great Barrington, Stockbridge, and West Stockbridge, while Southern Berkshire’s member towns are Sheffield, Egremont, New Marlborough, Monterey, and Alford. Though it comprises fewer towns, Berkshire Hills’ total enrollment is nearly 1,200, while Southern Berkshire’s stands at 633, according to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Despite their substantial difference in size, the two districts bear remarkable similarities, Eberwein and fellow consultant Rob Putnam said in their presentation comparing educational quality. Click here to see the PowerPoint slide show.
Among the similarities Eberwein cited were per-pupil spending, faculty salaries, the content of their district improvement plans, graduation requirements, graduation rates, dropout rates, grade 9 passing rates, teacher load, core classes, SAT scores, and external ratings.
In general, Southern Berkshire has smaller classes and lower student-to-teacher ratios. Berkshire Hills also has a significantly greater percentage of its students enrolled in advanced placement (AP) courses and those who achieve a score of 3 or above. And while CVTE is important to both districts, the Berkshire Hills program serves more students and offers more courses.
“We do believe the school districts have a lot in common that would facilitate a degree of collaboration and consolidation across the districts,” said Eberwein, a former superintendent in both the Lee and Pittsfield public schools. “Each district has unique strengths that could be used to expand opportunities, advance outcomes, and improve each other.”
While some audience members preferred the idea of preserving both districts and only sharing a high school, rather than a wholesale merger, the reaction to the presentation among most of the participants was positive.
“You all knocked my socks off,” said Sharon Gregory, the former chair of the Great Barrington Finance Committee. “The coverage and the depth, the data and the ideas were pitch perfect.”
“I’ve always felt that just consolidating the districts was going to be a very tough sale,” added Sheffield resident H. Dennis Sears, a member of the Southern Berkshire School Committee. “What I like about this is … you can do something not just for the education of our students that are here in Southern Berkshire, but also to attract more businesses … that’s not what I expected to hear tonight.”
Over the last 20 years, the two districts, like other public schools in the region, have seen a sharp decline in student enrollment, with combined enrollment of K–12 dropping from approximately 2,700 students in 2000 to approximately 1,800 in 2020, or a drop of 33 percent. Click here to see the board’s enrollment analysis for the two districts from 2000–2020.
Enrollment is projected to continue to decline another 28 percent through 2030, though, as The Edge reported last year, recent losses have slowed, likely because of an influx of outsiders seeking rural refuge during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some taxpayers in the two largest towns in their respective districts — Sheffield in SBRSD and Great Barrington in BHRSD — complain loudly about the heavy burdens their taxpayers must bear to finance the operations of the districts.
The situation is more critical at Berkshire Hills, where proposals of more than $50 million to rebuild the its aging high school were defeated in 2013 and a year later because tax-weary Barringtonians refused to approve an override of Proposition 2½, a longstanding state ballot initiative that limits increases in property-tax levies.
In both cases, the state would have paid for nearly 41 percent of the cost, not counting incentives that would have raised the state’s share closer to half. The largest MSBA reimbursement incentive (up to 6 additional percentage points) lies in the formation of a new school district as part of the building project.
Since then, the Berkshire Hills School Committee has appealed to the Massachusetts School Building Authority to be invited into the state’s eligibility period for aid to defray the cost of a new high school. But each time, the MSBA has respectfully declined, prompting the school committee to consider the possibility of proceeding without state funding.
The Eight-Town Regional Planning Board meets again tomorrow night via Zoom. Click here to see the agenda.
