GREAT BARRINGTON — A panel charged with advising the community on the fate of two shrinking South County school districts has recommended merging the Berkshire Hills and Southern Berkshire regional school districts and housing grades 9-12 in a new school on the Monument Mountain Regional High School campus.
At a meeting via Zoom last night, the Regional School District Planning Board voted 16-6 to explore the proposal to the eight towns of the two districts whose taxpayers will decide if the plan will ultimately become a reality.
The plan was one of seven the board considered after more than two years of investigation and research during a process set out by the state for districts that want to explore merging, consolidation or enhanced collaboration.
See Edge video below of last night’s meeting of the 8 Town Regional School District Planning Board:
The board proposed Model A2, which calls for merging the two districts and their central offices into one, and placing all the students of the merged district in a new high school with enhanced vocational education facilities at the Berkshire Hills campus on Stockbridge Road in the northern part of Great Barrington.
The elementary schools in Great Barrington, Sheffield, New Marlborough and Egremont would remain as is. Click here to view the 150-page detailed report and here to read the condensed PowerPoint presentation presented in March by the board’s consulting team headed by Jake Eberwein, a former superintendent of schools in Pittsfield and Lee.
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Most of the board members supported the proposal, arguing that it offers the best option for gaining efficiencies, economies of scale, and increased academic and extracurricular opportunities for the students of the two districts.
Opponents either disliked the proposal or they objected to it on procedural grounds. Jane Burke of New Marlborough, a former science educator, insisted further study was needed before making a recommendation.
“We’re picking a model before we have gone out to discuss this thoroughly,” Burke said after Don Coburn of Monterey motioned to recommend the plan. “So I am leery of putting out a model at all before we have a lot more info.”
“I have discussed this with the finance committee that I sit on in Egremont and they are in no way prepared to make any kind of recommendation or statement until they see more cost numbers — ongoing operational costs, not capital costs,” added Egremont’s Tom Berkel, who held senior positions at the Unilever and Dr. Pepper/Snapple corporations. “In business, when you do something like this, there is always a way to unwind it, but in public education if we go down this path, there will be no unwinding in a very long time.”
Burke motioned to postpone for 60 days a vote on Coburn’s original motion, but wound up receiving the support only of those who indicated they did not support plan A2 anyway.
“We have a June 30 deadline for expenditure of our remaining state funds, so if we postpone for 60 days that takes us to June 24, which leaves six days to spend the remaining funds,” replied board chair Lucy Prashker.
“The point of this group was to narrow it down to one option and be able to really home in on that option,” added Berkshire Hills School Committee chair Steve Bannon. “A motion to postpone is just going to waste our time.”
“CVTE is something our community needs desperately,” said former selectboard member Nadine Hawver of Sheffield, referring to the planned expansion of the new high school to include career and vocational-technical education. “It’s critical that we don’t postpone this vote, that we do narrow in on an option, and dig deep on it.”
“If we don’t pick an option and move forward, we will never answer any of these questions,” said Tara White, a member of the New Marlborough Board of Selectmen.
Prashker, who voted for the proposal, said the board’s charge was to select from among the seven scenarios “this board believes holds the most promise.” Then the board should “take the deep dive and we test all the assumptions again.” The next step would be to draft a proposed regional school district agreement to present to the finance committees in the eight towns. The board cannot do that until it selects a preferred model.
“It is very important that this group move forward with some sort of preferred option so that we can dig deeper and meaningfully engage the community about the potential impact of this,” said Berkshire Hills Superintendent Peter Dillon.
But Burke, who chairs the Southern Berkshire School Committee, cut to the chase and repeated an accusation circulating on social media: “I would like somebody to convince me that we are not moving this fast because we need to do this for Berkshire Hills.”
After years of pondering its next step, the Berkshire Hills School Committee learned earlier this year that it has been accepted back into the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s (MSBA) period of eligibility for state aid to rebuild Monument Mountain Regional High School. The school committee then voted to borrow money to fund a feasibility and schematic study for a potential new high school.
A merger of the two school districts would mean an increase of up to 6 percentage points in reimbursement from the MSBA. Berkshire Hills is also beefing up its career-vocational-technical program, which a consultant on Eberwein’s team suggested earlier this year would address a critical need in South County and perhaps cause the MSBA to look even more favorably on the project.
The board members voting against the proposal were George McGurn, Danile Jordan Kelly and Tom Berkel of Egremont, Laura Rodriguez of Monterey, Jane Burke of New Marlborough and Bonnie Silvers of Sheffield. Click here for a full list of the committee members, which includes residents of the towns and municipal and school district officials.
The board next meets on May 9 at 5:30 p.m. to discuss next steps, as well as other matters that might arise.
