SHEFFIELD — Partnering with Bard College at Simon’s Rock, the Southern Berkshire Regional School District announced this week that Mount Everett Regional School has been designated as an early college by the state Early College Joint Committee.
The district had applied for more than $530,000 in grants to fund this program. Mount Everett is further expanding its opportunities available to high school students in the region with a vision of increased access to college.
In their awarding of the grant to fund this program, members of the Early College Joint Committee, which is part of the state Early College Initiative, described Mount Everett’s program as “first of its kind” and “ground-breaking,” the school said in a news release this week.
Superintendent Beth Regulbuto said the program will include grades 8–12 and every student will participate in the experiential phases of the program, including course instruction and college campus visits for all grade 9 and 10 students. The program will also accommodate 100% of students in college credit-bearing courses.
Because empowering students to make their own decisions is a key to their future success, Regulbuto said the goal of Mount Everett and Simon’s Rock is to have at least 80% of students taking tuition-free, credit-earning Early College courses by the time the program is fully built out.
“Too often, we hear about students who think earning a degree is out of their reach,” Regulbuto said. “As educators, we need to think like entrepreneurs and find ways to engage these students every day. In earning an Early College designation, we’re providing new pathways and experiences for Mount Everett students while they are still in high school.”
Credit-bearing program offerings at Mount Everett will include the courses frequently required by colleges, such as literature, composition, and mathematics, as well as college courses that will introduce students to a variety of academic disciplines. College courses offer opportunities for students to explore potential interests and career paths and align with guided pathways at Mount Everett — such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known by the acronym STEM), liberal arts, the fine arts, and global studies.
The program has been in the making for a while. During the 2019–2020 academic year, Simon’s Rock launched a successful pilot of the program with Mount Everett Regional School, which serves as the district’s middle and high school.
The pilot was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, but resumed last summer with the addition of Monument Mountain Regional High School to the program. Approximately 35 visiting high school students from both Mount Everett and Monument had participated in the pilot program at that time.
The purpose of the Early College Initiative grant is to create and maintain partnerships that connect school districts and high schools with the state’s colleges, in order to give thousands of Massachusetts students access to college completion and career success, Regulbuto said.
The logic behind the program is that by exposing students at a younger age to college-level learning, motivation to persist in college-level work will increase. As a result, students who may have previously identified as not intending to go to college will experientially learn that they are able to do college-level work, the statement said.
“Now that we officially have the designation, we can update our Program of Studies,” said Regulbuto. “Students will be able to hit the ground running with course selection this spring and be ready for Early College at Mount Everett in the fall.”
