Sheffield — The first day of the new school year for students in the Southern Berkshire Regional School District is on Wednesday, August 31.
The school district is made up of Mount Everett Regional School and Undermountain Elementary School, both in Sheffield, along with New Marlborough Central School in Mill River, and South Egremont School.
In early August, a few weeks before the official start of school, the district received good news: After a review of district benchmark assessments of students from Kindergarten to 8th grade, there has been a 38 percent improvement in math skills performance. According to a press release issued by the district, students have scored on or above grade level in math during the past school year.
In the 2020-2021 school year, the district was awarded a competitive state grant, Accelerating Math Instruction for Students, which allowed the district to employ the I-Ready online math program. The I-Ready program is operated by Curriculum Associates of North Billerica.
“I-Ready is an internal benchmark system that we’re using to monitor student progress in real-time,” District Superintendent Beth Regulbuto told The Berkshire Edge. “We can make adjustments to our instruction in real time to help out students, as opposed to waiting for test results like MCAS [Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests] that only come out once a year-long after your students have moved on to the next grade. Because we could identify specific learning gaps we were able to individualize instruction for students and address those gaps right away, increasing student performance.”
As for the new year coming up, Regulbuto said that she is very excited for schools to be open and for students to come back.
“We have been very, very busy preparing for our new year,” Regulbuto said. “I don’t have the full enrollment numbers yet, but I think we’ve been holding steady at 635 students in the district.”
When asked about priorities for the school year, Regulbuto said that the school district’s priorities have not changed over the years. “We are always about student-centered needs,” she said. “We are making sure that our students feel safe and feel ready to access school and its programs. We want to make sure that they are engaged, and that their work continues to improve, and we want to provide them with opportunities to help them figure out what they might want to do with their lives and build upon their own learning. When they ask the question ‘what do I want to be when I grow up?’ We want to help them find ways and opportunities to help them with their journey.”
Regulbuto said that one thing the school district will be looking at this year is how to ensure that its curriculum is diverse and inclusive. “We are also looking at ways to make sure that we have social and emotional support in our classrooms,” Regulbuto said. “Addressing learning gaps to move students forward is also a top priority.”
Regulbuto said that social and emotional support for students has become a priority, especially considering what students had to deal with during the Covid pandemic. “I think it’s going to be a challenge because the pandemic really isn’t over,” she said. “Right now, we are dealing with a new reality. We’re still going to have to figure out ways to navigate that. The biggest challenge of this pandemic is supporting the students socially and emotionally. We want to focus on the whole child because we want to make sure that they are feeling welcomed and that they belong.”
Regulbuto said that issues concerning safety will be addressed throughout the year in light of the school shooting in May at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. “We need to make sure that our students feel safe,” she said. “Our school committee took a vote at the end of last year to become an ALICE District.”
ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate, is a school safety program that several other school districts in the state have utilized.
“We already had plenty of safety plans in place, but we will be modifying our drills a little bit, along with reexamining our process and procedures,” Regulbuto said. “There will be a lot of community and parent involvement throughout the year as we move towards this. We will be revamping our emergency drill process, and we will be actively engaging in those drills throughout the school year.”
Regulbuto added that, for the school year to be successful, she is hoping for substantial involvement from school district parents and families. “We will be giving parents and families a lot of opportunities for involvement this year,” she said. “Last year, we had a series where we held community conversations, and those were very successful. We are going to keep providing opportunities for communication between our families, students, faculty, and staff. We have amazing students here in our schools and they have done a lot of great things. We may be a tiny school district, but we do really big things.”
