Minutes – Sept 14, 2017

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington                   Stockbridge                 West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Monument Mountain Regional High School – Library

September 14, 2017 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

School Committee:                S. Bannon, J. St. Peter, K. Piasecki, A. Potter, A. Hutchinson, B. Fields, R. Dohoney, D. Weston,

Administration:                      Peter Dillon

Staff/Public:                            B. Doren, N. Thompson, A. Rex, K. Burdsall, K. Farina, S. Soule

Absent:

List of Documents Distributed:

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated August 24, 2017
Personnel Report dated September 14, 2017

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:    — hr. 50 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 7pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

MINUTES:

BHRSD School Committee Minutes of Meeting dated August 24, 2017

Motion to approve all minutes:   R. Dohoney                Seconded:  A. Potter                  Approved:  Unanimous

TREASURER’S REPORT:  N/A

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News Item(s): See below
• Introductions:
  • Amy Rex, MMRHS, Principal
  • Kristi Farina, Director of Learning & Teaching
• Requests:
  • MMRHS – Additional Boys Soccer Coach funded by Booster Club: Dillon – they are anticipating 50 plus players are preseason so I am excited about that.  It is nice to have another person there to support them.

Motion to approve Additional Boys Soccer Coach:   A. Potter                Seconded:  B. Fields                  Approved:  Unanimous

• Review and Approve Student/Family Handbooks: Dillon – We have three handbooks, one for each of the buildings.  You noticed when you read them that we are moving toward having a section that is fairly universal across the three buildings as well as one part that is specific to each of the buildings.  The assistant principals worked together to try to get more aligned, and I think going forward we will be even more aligned.  Anything anyone noticed?  I read them all cover to cover but even I miss a typo.

Motion to approve 2017-18 Student and Family Handbooks for Monument Mount Regional High School, Du Bois Regional Middle School and Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School:  B. Fields                Seconded:  A. Potter                  Approved:  Unanimous

• Updates:
  • Berkshire County Educational Task Force: Dillon – This is chugging along.  Phase III work is moving forward.  They are working on a communications plan and a way to get additional feedback from citizens in all of the communities so expect to hear something more on that in the coming weeks.  They have worked on trying to hone their message and make it more clear.

Good News:

Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – Mary Berle, Principal:  We have had a great start at Muddy Brook.  Chess Club started on the first day of school.  We had a fantastic Ice Cream Social sponsored by the PTA with teachers scooping ice cream.  Tonight, I just left a PTA meeting attended by over 30 parents which is awesome as we try to work on a new structure for the PTA that includes grade-level leads working closely with our instructional leadership team and planning events.  Two significant shifts this year for us; we have increased the time for specials to 55 minutes and students and teachers are loving it.  It gives classroom teachers a little more prep time and students are sinking in and going deep in their specials and our specialists report that the closing  of classes in a place where conversations are really going well in unhurried ways.  We have taken our second PE class, in previous years students have had two PE classes; now they have one 55 minutes class and they have two to four fitness bursts which are aerobic events that happen with a PE teacher and a classroom teacher.  Classroom teachers are getting some fitness bursts alongside their students.  Kids really love it; the reports have been positive and staff have energy.  PE teachers are excited about working out with kids.  It is a new thing we are doing based on research to try to make a really good day for kids.  A fitness burst with a recess and sometimes also a PE class does make a better day.  The 55 minute specials is also calming the day down.

I want to highlight a student tonight.  Dylan Netzer is one of our current fourth graders.  He brought friends with him last year to meet with me a number of times to discuss recess conditions.  He made a very thoughtful argument for soccer goals and rubber bases to make the recess experience better.  In particular, kids were using cones for soccer and having goals he would argue, balls would travel less far; you could tell when there would be a goal and that wouldn’t be a dispute.  His arguments were so compelling and thoughtful and he did such a good job of rallying his friends around this that he bought those goals and those bases.  It is going really well at recess.  Celebrating the ground-up leadership from a student is wonderful.

Based on our reading data, we are rolling out a supplemental curriculum in English Language Arts called Fundations.  It is to teach phonics and awareness.  Teachers are pretty excited about it.  It is going to help us close some gaps that we are seeing at a granular level.

Du Bois Regional Middle School – Ben Doren, Principal:  We have had a great opening of school.  The past couple of weeks have been very busy.  I am most appreciative of the whole faculty and their organization.  Meet-the-Teachers Night is coming up on Tuesday.  All 5th through 8th grade families are invited.  They will get to meet the grade teams and celebrate the beginning of the school year along with our Scholastic book fair.

We do something really well at the middle school which is trying to get to know kids as individuals and also to make sure we have crafted instruction to make sure that we are teaching all students.  We started the 5th grade year thinking we had a really good plan based upon the work that we had done in the spring, understanding those students were coming up from Muddy Brook, so we actually grew about 12% from students moving into district, choice students, etc. but we realized the plans that we made were not actually the best for kids.  Our so faculty go together, put our nose to the grind and we re-cohorted the entire fifth grade to make sure we were taking care of teachers, instruction, paras.  It was quite seamless and exciting to us.   The fact that we turned it around in three days instead of six weeks was amazing.  I am quite proud of my team and what we can do.

Sixth grade is taking a hike up Monument Mountain tomorrow.  They made a plan of doing integration with special education and enrichment making the best use of all our teachers; class sizes are smaller so we can focus on instruction.  The kids are spending two periods a day on English, Fiction/Nonfiction and Literacy in addition to their Science, Social Studies and Math.

Seventh grade has done an amazing job getting together around integration.  We have our ESL students, emotional disabilities program called the Therapeutic Learning Center, fully integrated into our programs with the right support and the right teachers.  It is adding to the experience of all students through the mixed groupings.

Eighth is really amazing.  We are thinking about the end of the school year.  We have to get grades in early, like seniors in high school so we can run all of the awards and report cards for graduation which is the night before the last day of school.  The last couple of days are about community activities, trying to keep the kids busy and having fun but realizing we could make better use of the time.  They found a program called Year End Students or YES.  It is about doing community service.  We have planned about 10 projects for the last three days for eighth graders.  They are going to go off and fix the Appalachian Trail or make meals for seniors, work on farms, but basically give back to the community.

Our eighth grader mentor training is tomorrow in the morning.  That is for volunteers and our adjustment counselors, clinicians but also parent volunteers and a collaboration with staff from Railroad Street and Berkshire South, we are going to be doing a full training of our continuing eighth mentors that will collect all of the seventh grade mentors.

Mary Stuckland our 7th and 8th grade science teacher started the green beans last year and it is really taking off.  We are doing recycling.  We have added metal and cans and plastic and looking at doing some composting.  Our advisor program is taking off.  Miles Wheat our assistant principal is leading our third year of restorative practices.  We have had an amazing start with our autism and behavior center.  Ellie Rizzo is a new liaison starting to bring kids back into the district that we have spent a lot of money on outplacement and also servicing a lot of kids coming up from Muddy Brook that we realized there was a need for.  Kate Bursdall showed a lot of leadership in setting this up.  It is great to see kids that are nonverbal or in wheelchairs out and in classrooms and about in the school working toward integration.

Monument Mount Regional High School – Amy Rex, Principal: We also had a wonderful opening.  It began with our freshman class coming for just the first day and doing a convocation.  The end of the week, we concluded with our required evacuation drill.  We also had a school assembly that was put together by our student government.  Tristan Alston, our senior class president gave a very powerful message to our students and faculty.  He referenced recent events of Charlottesville and Hurricane Harvey and really inspired us to ensure that our actions and interactions reflected the humanity that was displayed in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and not let it reflect the hatred that was put forth during the Charlottesville tragedy.  It was truly inspiring and well received.  The energy over the first few weeks has been extremely spirited and positive and certainly has been oriented to rigor and relevance relationships and shared responsibility between students and faculty.

I had the opportunity to visit all classrooms and all teachers.  It is really apparent to me that teachers are very intentional in designing classroom opportunities and learning opportunities that reflect the Monument Mountain mission, “to create opportunities that foster intellectual and personal growth and challenge all to become courageous learners.  Engage citizens and individuals of integrity”  It has been really rewarding to see students challenged to think critically and formulate their own thoughts and have a variety of ways in which they are able to express those thoughts in the classroom setting.

We also have a total of 42 students this first semester who will be engaged in internships which is outstanding.  In terms of professional learning, the Monument Mountain departments have each developed their own goals and they range from curriculum alignment focused on instructional strategies to meet diverse learners and/or establishing efficiency benchmarks consistent with courses that are alike.  In addition, they have decided that they are going to conduct a process this year to do peer observations and visit each other’s classrooms using a variety of lenses to look at each others instruction and to develop strategies and have reflective sessions together.

Tomorrow is our first half day for our professional development and the focus will be on special education and 504 as well as working together to share strategies on how to best support our students in the classroom.

Next Monday is our first advisory council meeting at 7pm here in the library.  I am hopeful that people will come.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee: N/A
• Building and Grounds Sub Committee: N/A
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Sub Committee: D. Weston – the last two meetings, I was out of town taking children to college. The superintendent evaluation process was a little more cumbersome this year because we had to include the school districts that comprise the Shaker Mountain School Union as part of the process.  We had input from members of our school committee, members of Richmond, members of New Ashford and members of Hancock.  We met in June and I have submitted two documents one of which is the evaluation and one is a compilation of the individual scores that were given.  There are a couple of things worth noting.  One is that the members that evaluated Dr. Dillon would all score areas the same way.  We had similar views of Dr. Dillon’s performance as did Dr. Dillon with his performance.  The areas that he felt he was strong in, we agreed; areas we felt he was not as strong in but still proficient, he generally agreed with us.  The scores that were given, all matched up well with Dr. Dillon’s self-evaluation and between all the other districts.  When you look at the compilation of all of the individual scores, just a couple of things worth noting:  there is one score called Impact on Student Learning which Dr. Dillon got all 3s and the modifier that is attached to it is high, that is the only area that you could only get a 1, 2 or 3 so a 3 was the highest rating on that one.  Don’t confuse it with all of the other scores.  We went through and averaged all the scores, put everybody’s comments into the final document and evaluated him in Standard 1, 2, 3 and 4 which were all exemplary.  It was no big leap to give Dr. Dillon an exemplary rating for his performance for the past school year as the superintendent.

Motion to accept the evaluation:  R. Dohoney       Seconded:  D. Weston   Accepted:  Unanimous.

1. Bannon – Just to clarify, Dan you said we had to include Shaker Mountain. We didn’t have to but we thought it…D. Weston – it was per agreement with them. S. Bannon – the agreement reason as we thought it would be redundant and also burdensome to have two evaluation committees going at the same time.  D. Weston – the nice thing about including them was the dialogues we had with them surrounding the evaluation rolled right into the shared services committee.  Now I think we are going to move to combine the two at least have the meetings on the same evening.  The conversations, we are talking about what Berkshire Hills was working on and what Richmond was working on and Hancock too, they meshed together pretty well.  It was not a tedious process for us; it was a very productive process and I think it brought the Shaker Mountain Union and Berkshire Hills closer together.    P Dillon – I same this every year and I sincerely mean it, whatever success I have is tied to the really thoughtful team I work with and that team just gets bigger and bigger.  It is five principals, two special ed directors, director of learning and teaching in one district; a part-time curriculum person in another district and assistant administrator, a whole gaggle of secretaries and a whole bunch of people so I really appreciate that and the work that the Advisory and Evaluation Committee.  As much as it focuses on that it has given me good advice at certain times during the year so it is nice to have them as a sounding board.  Dan you have done this the last several years and you have transitioned the process to another person.  D. Weston – yes, Dewey Wyatt from Richmond is going to be the chair of that subcommittee for the coming year and has been on the school board for Richmond for quite awhile.  We would like to have all of the districts involved in chairing that committee.

• Technology Sub Committee: N/A
• Finance Sub Committee: Dohoney – We did not meet due to a lack of quorum but we did reach out to get a meeting scheduled.
• District Consolidation & Sharing Sub-Committee: N/A

Personnel Report:

• Dillon – it is a pretty straight-forward report. A lot of mentoring work is going on and there are a handful of additional appointments and a number of paraprofessionals that started at the beginning of the year.  We are all staffed up.  We are doing well.

New Business:

1. Weston – I need to declare conflict of interest on Rich’s motion because I am an employee of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District and both the motion to try seek an increased relationship and the motion to withdraw from the county education task force, they both could have a financial impact on me. I need to declare a conflict of interest and not participate in those discussions.

Motion to have the Berkshire Hills Regional School District withdraw from the Berkshire County Educational Task Force. – R. Dohoney                Seconded:  B. Fields

1. Dohoney – to be clear, I am not against the task force but I am very much against our continued participation in it at this time. It really boils down for me to one thing, it is the opportunity cost of continuing to be a member. I was reluctant at the two votes we took to participate and to fund it because it would distract us from our real mission.  I was convinced that we should go along and see where it goes.  Now it has come to its conclusion that that mission is to form a countywide school district; to dissolve this district and for all other towns to form a countywide district.  I personally believe that is not feasible; I don’t think it will happen.  Even if it did, I don’t think it would be good for our member towns or for our students.  I think it would result in increased costs for taxpayers and the quality of education our kids get.  Even if I thought it was the best idea going, I would be against it at this time.  We put a lot of thought, time and effort into developing in the wake of the whole issue this three-prong approach to developing a mission for our school district.  I pulled out the plan that Marianne had prepared aligned up the three-prong approach and read through the minutes, I was so encouraged to realize that we are really doing well and achieving the goals that we set out for ourselves from 2015.  Setting aside the money issue, we don’t have the political capital, we don’t have the time, we don’t have the energy or the resources to pursue something as divergent from our mission concurrently.  We just can’t do it at the same time.  Even after my little tirade last time, a few days later I read on iBerkshires a recount of the school district and read quotes from our superintendent.  That is not the message that should be coming from our school district.  This is the message that should be coming from our school district.  This is what we should all be working on and moving forward.  It sends a dramatic mis-message to our communities if we say we have one foot in this camp and one foot in the other camp.  My motion is to withdraw but to keep doing what we are doing and to keep focusing our eyes on the prize.  We need to be focusing on rehabbing this school.  We have to focus in on that.  We have to keep improving our education here not going off and fighting an unnecessary war.  Some districts have really significant needs and need dramatic form, we just don’t share their interest at all right now.  I wish the state-funding mechanism was different and it would solve everybody’s problems and I hope we can all keep working together on that but to continue to participate together on this, it would be throwing everything out the window.  I think it is cheating ourselves from what we are about to achieve.  We gave it a try; we stuck it out.  We helped them reach their conclusion but their conclusion is just in the best interest of those we are selected to serve.  I hope we just politely with a handshake and a smile, walk away from the task force; then we can move on to some important things.  January is going to be a big month.  Big decisions have to be made.  You need a tremendous amount of redemptive community outreach and support.  That is where our focus needs to be.  We shouldn’t be participating in this project without our own community support.  I can tell you we don’t have it.  There was a motion on the floor of the Great Barrington Town Meeting that mirrored what the task force is trying to do.  Not one school committee member spoke against it or for it.  We were silent and it went down in flames.  The people of Great Barrington didn’t want it.  The Town of Stockbridge and West Stockbridge don’t even send people to the task force.  The Great Barrington member was the sole member who voted against the countywide approach.  Steve I know voted for it but said that he regrets it.  Why are we pursuing this if our constituents don’t want it?  If they don’t want it, it’s going to fail anyway.  I hope you will support my motion and shake hands and walk away from the Berkshire County Education Task Force.
2. Fields – I agree totally with what Rich has said and I believe it is in our best interest to withdraw. I say that with a heavy heart because before they came out with this unbelievably unrealistic aspiration which Rich has said, is their goal, I found that incompatible with what our district stands for in its mission and its philosophy. I found also that it was educationally deficient in that it just mirrors what the state has done for so long.  It is a top down approach.  Where was the input of the teachers in this overview plan?  How can we have a district that will encompass from the borders of Connecticut to the borders of Mass/Vermont.  You tell me, living in the Berkshires how that would be accomplished and how educationally is that going to be more efficient.  I do agree with Rich that there is some business influence in there.  There are some business interests here.  I understand that it is going to be countered by the business argument that we need people to come to the Berkshires and we have to do that with an educated population but you don’t get an educated population with a one-district plan.  The other thing that really bugged me besides it being more bureaucratic, more top down, more administratively a web, was that every attempt that we will do from now on in every town, will be colored with “this is all leading to one district, right?”  Let’s take the high school, when we go out and we formulate a renovation plan, there will be people that will say, what about that one district?
3. Stephen – I would like to hear from some members of the task force. What was surprising to me was the task force came to us, sat down at the table with us, explained what was going on. This thing all of a sudden jumped from doing that, to going directly to legislators.  How did that happen?  Where is the step that was missed.  Why don’t we bring this to the school boards before we bring in the legislators and come up with a PR plan to push this forward?  S. Bannon – I had a couple of problems with the way it was being done.  I thought that the school committee should have been involved and that was one of my real concerns.  It is a top down plan and they are not getting the school committees involved and when you don’t get them involved….without having the chairs of the school committees there, I made it clear that I am voting for myself, I am not voting for the school committee because they never gave us the chance to come back to the school committee.  Absolutely one of the flaws in the plan.  The other flaw as far as I am concerned is that, and I do regret how I voted, but I expressed it there, I could have had more support for three districts under an umbrella somehow of a union but have one district throughout the county doesn’t seem like it could ever happen.  They are biting off more than they can chew.  I just can’t see it occurring.  It is hard when you approve plan…a number of years ago, we did a strategic plan and it was a pretty good one with a lot of work from community members but there were a couple of items in it that I said why is that even in there; I know that we will never be able to do that.  This is the same thing.  You are approving a plan that in my mind the members of the community have the final say.  If the plan is to have a legislature forced down people’s throats that would be the worst thing.  S. Stephen – the impression comes across that it is.  They literally when directly to the lawmakers instead of going to school boards.  The impression that comes across is that “we don’t need those guys, let’s go directly to the lawmakers and get this done.  S. Bannon – I pointed that out at one of the meetings.  S. Stephen – One of the documents was 54 pages and I thought I would never have to read that stuff again once I got out of grad school but the majority of it was pushing towards the one district option.  S. Bannon – it most certainly was.  Just let me correct a couple of things.  We are probably the leader in shared services.  The task force has a whole list and there are a bunch of shared services going on especially up north and down here.  We have taken it the farthest.
4. Dillon – All along, there was a misstep around the communications to elected officials. The group has framed its work as advisory in nature and the group has no real authority except to share ideas with elected officials meaning locally elected officials, school committee members, select boards, to potentially move forward with something. There may be more commonality than one would see on the services.  If one proposes a ten year plan to more toward one countywide district, the logically progress is to do stuff locally first.  I am comfortable with us continuing to do the work we are doing and I don’t think that is in opposition to what the task force is doing.  I think it is a parallel path but the broader political statement about not getting distracted and working without our own immediate communities, I think there is merit to that.  S. Bannon – Michael could you step up.  Michael joined the committee for four or five years….

Michael – I joined in February so I wasn’t present at the creation of it.  I was the guy that voted no because I thought it was politically unrealistic and it would screw up whatever they were going to do by setting a target they couldn’t reach without thinking about the governmental problems, the financing problems and other operational problems which were noted but they were things to solve later; like harmonizing the contracts with the teachers.  The odds are that they are going to want to ratch it up not to the average and that would affect the numbers.  My observation about the process, I think they were surprised at the result at the recommendation they ended up with.  I think most of the people on that task force thought that the consensus would be for three regions or supervisory unions.  When they went around the room and the small groups seemed to prefer the countywide one that was not expected.  It certainly is contrary it much of the advise about what kinds of changes are more feasible.  Having said that, I observed it sounds like the educational professionals on the task force and most of them are school superintendents, professors, deans, school committees, insiders, the consensus was a school system at that scale would be optimal if all that mattered was running a school system.  Ignoring governments, ignoring financing, etc.  A thought for your consideration, I was just there as someone being from south county local government, if the task force had recommended three regions, would you have the same problem?  I think there might be someone on the task force that think that is a more realistic option.  Whether they are willing to reconsider it at this point, I don’t know because they are at the point of coming up with a public relations program to sell the recommendation they have come up with.  If they had enough push back and decided to scale back their aspirations, would that affect your thinking?  S. Bannon – there was talk about in order to get to one region you might start to form three.  There is nothing in writing about that and it did sound like some people were saying we might stop at that too.  What you say is correct.  S. Stephen – after reading 45 pages and going through thinking what is going to be the easiest and more economically advantageous for everybody would be one district.  Is that the easiest.  No.  It seems to me you got a task force just saying let’s save some money and we are going to try to ram this through because you got businesses saying I want to be able to say we have great things in our school districts and we are going to be doing all of this.  A. Potter – my biggest concern is could we envision something like a one county district along with a one county tax levy?  Without that single county taxing authority this plan isn’t going anywhere.  Michael – another way to frame it is changing a county-wide structure would be to reinvent county-wide government.  It is a very steep climb.  R. Dohoney – the issue in the school renovation vote was the $13 then $14 tax rate.  The tax rate is $38 per 1,000 in Pittsfield.  People in Great Barrington don’t like $14.  To be clear, they have split tax rate.  Their residential tax rate is $18.  Michael – I am impressed with the educational people on this task force believe that the educational outcomes would be better at the large scale.  The scale permits specialization and elaboration and variation that a smaller scale does not.  P. Dillon – it is not articulated as well as it might be, the thinking was if you get below a magic number, we didn’t specify it, a very small school would be limited in its range of offerings so how big do you get to have that range of offerings to get too big and you create another whole set of problems?  As some high schools get very very small and teeter on the edge of graduating classes of 40ish, are students in schools of that size not afforded opportunities to engage in a wide range of curriculum offerings and if you get a little bigger are you able to do more?  S. Bannon – to be clear, I think the size of a one region district is not insurmountable.  What turns me is the geography.  When you drive from Sheffield to Williamstown you are losing some of the ability to have that educational expertise.  R. Dohoney – you are also creating a system like Boston and this big school districts; they have a lot of kids but every kid has geographic accessibility to all the assets of the school district.  If not, you put yourself in a political death spiral where the appropriating authority and giant school committee is fighting like congress fights.  We do well on this committee and the community is dealing with our funding challenges in a cooperative way.  When you make it so that people have to pit their interest against each other because of geography, you are going to rip the whole thing apart and it is going to affect educational quality for everybody.  S. Bannon – I still have not decided how I am not going vote on this but doing nothing is not an option.  R. Dohoney – we aren’t doing nothing!  We are doing everything!  S. Bannon – I realize that.  What I am saying is that I still think your motions …. My concern is that we need to do more shared services and maybe regionalization with Lee, Lenox, Southern Berkshire.  I think you have to take this as a package because I still have hope that the task force at some point says “this is what we aspire to do but this isn’t realistic.  Let’s scale this to something different.” which we would probably agree with.  That why pulling out kind of makes me think they are not cast in stone yet.  Enough school districts, enough people say to them “that was a great idea but let’s do something that actually work.”  R. Dohoney – that is what we are saying.  S. Bannon – I’m not sure pulling out is the answer.  Michael’s idea may be political and going back and saying we would like you to reconsider your vote.  R. Dohoney – you gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold them, know when to walk away and know when to run.  It’s time to run.  S. Stephen – they made a decision.  You voted for it, other people voted for it.  This is what their plan it.  If we want to go ahead and concentrate on shared services and work the Southern Berkshire, Lee, Lenox which we absolutely should be doing and we should be doing in a big way, that is the way to go.  If they want to reassess the one district, are they going to say “no, you can’t be involved” if we wanted to come back in?  I don’t think so.  A. Potter – it will continue without us.  I can’t imagine they would be successful without us.  S. Bannon – one of the things to consider that as of right now, Lee, Lenox, Southern Berkshire are active members of that group so we have no reason to believe that by negotiating with us would be against what votes they took and what support they have for the Berkshire County Educational Task Force.  There is talk at the task force that this could be done piecemeal which makes me shudder even more because as certain district combine that will make it easier in the long run but it seems like chaos to me.  B. Fields – then it will all be colored by what whatever move is made locally.  It will be colored by this perception and perception is 98% reality in many people’s’ minds, that this is leading to one district.  That will actually cloud what is being done locally in small steps.  All those small steps will also be clouded by “oh, you are headed for one district” and I know this particular person doesn’t want the one district idea.  R. Dohoney – Through the school vote, all the budgets and all my crazy cuts and proposals that never go through, I have never been contacted with more concern from teachers than this issue.  S. Bannon – is it Neil Clark?  Neil Clark is a union representative on the committee and there was another person who just stepped down and she has been replaced.  The only thing I don’t want to send out is the wrong message that this district wants to go it alone and has on interest.  I just want to make sure that that message is clear.

Motion to have the Berkshire Hills Regional School District withdraw from the Berkshire County Educational Task Force. – R. Dohoney           Seconded:  B. Fields       Abstentions:  3       In Favor:  5           Motion passes

Motion that we by and through our Chair that we request that the meeting with the members of the Shared Services Project discuss consolidation of Southern Berkshire County School Districts – R. Dohoney         Seconded:  B. Fields  – WITHDRAWN

1. Dillon – the Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project has been going on for about 2 or 2 ½ years and it is out of the original community compact. It includes Southern Berkshire, Berkshire Hills, Lee, Lenox, Richmond, Farmington River and Becket got thrown in at some point early on. We received roughly $100,000 through the state house, the governor and lt. Governor and an additional $20 or $25,000 in private money from bank foundations to do work around shared services.  We focused in four or five areas and that work is ongoing.  Professional development, technology, grant writing, and connected to the professional development some curriculum work.  The group started out and initially it was superintendents and school committee chairs and then pretty early on it became clear that the work was nitty gritty, on the ground work around shared services and while the superintendents and school committee chairs focused on the work, the work is largely around how can we plan shared opportunities  for professional development in collaboration with the superintendent’s roundtable.  We brought in a consultant to do work on technology.  We have identified and are just in the process of grant writing.  We had aspirations down the road to do some shared stuff around special education and at time business manages and other business people have talked.  That is an ongoing group that does work around shared services.  It may not necessarily be the right forum to discuss consolidation because the acting people on it are superintendents and presumably the school committee chairs could come back.  R. Dohoney – my thought on that motion was that the schools involved in that are schools that we should be talking to about consolidation.  I have reviewed one of the goals of shared services is to build healthy relationships in other districts that would lead into consolidation in a manner that is educationally beneficial, that is not a top down, that is an organically grown way to have schools come together the same way that Stockbridge, Great Barrington and West Stockbridge came together 50 years ago.  I am very in favor of consolidation in all of its various forms on a workable level.  I view that group as a workable level. To have the discussion at least be broached with that group as to whether they want to get involved in exploring opportunities for consolidation.  P. Dillon – A thing may be to consider, and I would never suggest you amend your motion, but in the discussion of the other one, people thought the educational implications were lacking.  I am wondering if this group is a starting point to look at some of the educational implications and then the broader political implications would obviously need to happen at the school committee or selectboard/finance committee level.  That group would have some expertise there and obviously they would also need to lean on principals, teachers and paras and other people working in that context.  R. Dohoney – so how would you frame that as an amendment to my motion?  I move to amend my motion.

Motion that the Southern Berkshire Shared Services Project provide input as to the educational impacts of mergers and consolidations within Southern Berkshire – R. Dohoney             Seconded:  S. Stephen            Accepted:  Unanimous

Motion to request a joint meeting with the Southern Berkshire Regional School District School Committee for the sole purpose of discussing a merger of the Berkshire Hills Regional School District and the Southern Berkshire Regional School District – R. Dohoney                Seconded:  A. Potter       Accepted:  Unanimous

1. Bannon – I have a point of clarification. Do you want a meeting with the entire committee? Or a subgroup of the committee? R. Dohoney – I throw that out there because we are the only group that has a subcommittee for that.  This is a big issue.  Maybe the first meeting should be …. P. Dillon – as a point of clarification, I think Southern Berkshire has some parallel committee.  R. Dohoney – if the motion passes and Steve gets a response, he can certainly deal with their chair on how to form the meeting.  S. Bannon – so it doesn’t have to be the full committee?  R. Dohoney – I am not married to anything.

Motion to request a joint meeting with the Lee Public School Committee for the sole purpose of discussing a merger of the Berkshire Hills Regional School District and Lee Public Schools – R. Dohoney        Seconded:  B. Fields     Accepted:  Unanimous

1. Fields – in my opinion, having worked on the RACC Committee and in the discussions that went on for a year, the three people I worked with, one discussion we talked about we looked at the geographic map and I see in South Berkshire, we should have two high schools, one comprehensive high school and one academic high school. To not look at it that way, you are going to have taxpayers that are going to start asking questions as has already happened in South Berkshire. The idea that a district that is looking at dwindling enrollment, all you have to do is go to the DESE website and you see dwindling enrollment; you see with South Berkshire.  There is no doubt about it.  They might say, a political candidate told me that she had a discussion with a member of the committee and they talked about how Berkshire Hills has all of this financial trouble do to the fact that our town budget was voted down at the previous town meeting.  That got good headlines and that people said you are financially unstable.  I said, enrollment is down dramatically in that district and to say otherwise is to stick your head in the sand.  Our enrollment is steady.  That is due to some things that happened with choice which poses an ethical problem.  I think we need to have the whole committee there and do it face to face, which leads me to my second point, the Lee committee when we all met with them, I had good vibes from that meeting.  We talked about shared services.  We talked about some commonalities.  Educational philosophies may differ but that is going to happen and those things can be worked out.  Then I read in the paper that they are trying to go to Lenox and Lenox gave them the stiff upper lip and said “no way; we don’t need you.”  They basically said you need us more than we need you.  One of their committee members said “we did look at Berkshire Hills but we aren’t sure we are compatible with such a larger district.” and yet that same person voted for one district with the task force.  Where did their thought process change?  Whatever we can do to look north and look south because the economic realities of it are going to justify it.  There is no doubt about that.  I can’t believe the taxpayers are going to continue to want small schools, small school buildings and pay more and more taxes.  Let’s talk on a full committee basis and get the cards out on the table and get old histories out of the way.

Public Comment:  Will you and Peter be attending on Saturday?  S. Bannon – I could be as a selectboard member but I think at this point, I will talk to Peter about sending out an email to the task force.  P. Dillon – I think it is the will of the committee that I don’t participate.  I have a personal conflict anyway but the better question of would I be attending the next one but I don’t think I will because of the will of the committee.

MOTION TO ADJOURN:  A. Potter             Seconded:  D. Weston                 Accepted: Unanimous

The next school committee meeting will be held on October 5, 2017 – Regular Meeting – Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School

Meeting Adjourned at 8:17pm

Submitted by:

Christine M. Kelly, Recorder