To the editor:
This letter is in response to the letter from Kimberly Alcantara, Arthur Batacchi, Jane Burke, James DiPisa, and Donna Leep regarding the “reckless vote taken by the Eight Town Regional School District Planning Board” (RSDPB), which was published in the July 27 edition of The Edge.
Like them, I was “dismayed but not surprised,” but not about the vote which was taken, but by the characterization of the Board’s action as “reckless.”
I was “dismayed” because I know firsthand, having served on the RSDPB for two years, that this board of representatives from the five towns in the Southern Berkshire Regional School District and the three towns in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District, operating under the firm leadership of Lucy Prashker, is the absolute antithesis of “reckless.”
I was “not surprised” because over the years that the RSDPB has been operating, there has been a consistent pattern of challenging the process by which decisions were made when a decision is considered to be wrong by a minority of the board members.
What is new in this letter—and most offensive to me and, I expect, to the people on the RSDPB who have devoted countless hours of their personal time to a task which will shape the educational destiny of the students in these two school districts—is to be categorized as “well-meaning citizens serving on a board with generally no educational credentials [who] are shaping the academic trajectory for present and future generations of students.”
What the signatories of letter are saying is this: Only certain members of the board have the wisdom and knowledge to formulate strategies related to education and the rest of you should be following our lead because you are unqualified to deal with such complex problems. What an insult!
I am proud of the time I was able to serve on the RSDPB, of the work that the collective board has done, and of the informed recommendations that they have developed. The issues they tackled are multifaceted, the potential solutions are complex, and the outcomes of the final decisions are far reaching.
Their work has been deliberative, not reckless, and they are turning over to the voters of the eight towns a set of recommendations that are well reasoned and supported by in-depth research.
The final decision on whether to merge will be made by the voters of the eight towns. Everyone who has served on this board knows that the work they have done will enable those voters to make informed decisions.
No one should diminish their work or label it as “well-meaning, but uniformed.”
Roger Kavanagh
Former resident of West Stockbridge
Roger Kavanagh is a former member of the RSDPB and the former chair of the RSDPB Finance Committee.
