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Berkshire Community College Celebrates 60th Year With Video Ceremony

By Brittany Polito, iBerkshires Staff
04:01AM / Thursday, October 22, 2020

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The state's first community college opened 60 years ago in the Central Annex building on Second Street with about 150 students and a handful of disciplines. Since then, its moved to West Street, increased its student body by more than tenfold and offers 40 associate degrees and 15 certificates, some in disciplines that didn't exist 60 years ago. Much of Berkshire Community College's original establishment is because of the work done by former state Rep. Thomas C. Wojtkowski of Pittsfield, who represented what was then the 5th Berkshire District. "We all have to credit Tom Wojtkowski for the fact that

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Mount Greylock Superintendent Succession Topic in Exec Session

By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
01:03AM / Wednesday, October 21, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Executive session minutes from the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee show that the panel did discuss a succession plan for the district's superintendent behind closed doors, and the minutes shed light on the reason for the superintendent's subsequent departure. In mid-July, iBerkshires.com filed an Open Meeting Law complaint against the committee alleging that, "at the very least, the School Committee's deliberations on July 1 strayed into territory not covered by the stated exception to the Open Meeting Law." That meeting was one of four held in executive session for the stated purpose of conducting contract

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Mount Greylock Group Works to Promote Inclusion in 'Incredibly Undiverse Building'

By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
01:16AM / Monday, October 19, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A Mount Greylock Regional School committee charged with exploring issues of diversity, equity and inclusion last week began a conversation with the wider community about how to make the middle/high school a more welcoming place for all residents. The DEI Working Group of the Mount Greylock School Council hosted a 90-minute virtual conference on Tuesday attended by more than a dozen community residents, including several with ties to other groups addressing the same issues. "So many of us talked about our commitment to racial diversity, cultural diversity, special ed … we also reached out to the GSA [formerly known as the Gay-Straight

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Mount Greylock School Committee Moves Forward on Artificial Turf Project

By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
06:09AM / Saturday, October 17, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A divided Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Friday voted to move forward on a track to putting an artificial turf field out to bid. On a vote of 4-2, the committee agreed to spend the next week reviewing a year-old list of value engineering items associated with its athletic fields project and to vote as soon as next Thursday to pay its architect to do the detailed design work needed to rebid a project that already came in over budget in the fall of 2019. After nearly four hours of a meeting that began at noon and after hearing public comments that ran 9-to-1 against making a decision on Friday, the School Committee decided to ignore its

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Local Officials Question State's Color-Coding on COVID-19 Map

By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
01:19AM / Thursday, October 15, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A near miss for the local public school district has sharpened calls for changes in the way the commonwealth assesses COVID-19 spread at the local level. Steven Miller, a Williams College mathematics professor and member of the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee, has long been critical of the red-yellow-green-gray system the Department of Public Health created this summer to categorize municipalities. As it happens, Williamstown was categorized as yellow, meaning it had an averaged daily COVID-19 case rate of between four and eight (per 100,000 people) for two weeks at the end of September. That meant the first classification of

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Mount Greylock School Committee Debates Public Access to Meeting Packets

By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
04:01AM / Tuesday, October 13, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The interim superintendent of the Mount Greylock Regional School District on Thursday advised the School Committee to continue denying the public access to information lest the committee's work become part of the "public discourse." Last month, the committee heard a public comment drafted by iBerkshires.com reporter Stephen Dravis that questioned why the body refuses to post supporting material for topics under discussion at public meetings prior to the meeting. The district's past practice has been to post background material — like a district policy to be voted on in a meeting or a draft budget — after the meeting has

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Mount Greylock School Committee Schedules Friday Meeting to Settle Turf Field Question

By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
06:03AM / Saturday, October 10, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee could decide as soon as next Friday to put an artificial turf field project out to bid. The committee has called a special noon meeting for Oct. 16 with the sole purpose of potentially putting to bed an issue that has consumed hours of discussion at the committee level, months of work by a subcommittee the elected officials convened and years of conversations in the community. "We can try as much as we can to try to find common ground. But at the end of the day, there's going to be a difference of opinion as to what should be done, and it's our job as elected officials to take the vote,"

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Lanesborough's DiLego Resigns From Mount Greylock School Committee

By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
12:46AM / Thursday, October 08, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Citing politics and personal agendas that hamper the work of the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee, Lanesborough resident Regina DiLego has announced she is stepping down from the panel. At its meeting at the middle-high school on Thursday, the committee will hear about DiLego's letter of resignation in an update from Chair Christina Conry. On Wednesday afternoon, DiLego confirmed that she is the letter writer, unnamed on the meeting's agenda. "I find that I am just not in alignment with the direction of the School Committee or the district, and it is in my soul's best interest to walk away," DiLego wrote in reply

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UPDATE: Williamstown Moves to Gray; No Change Triggered for Mount Greylock Schools

By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
03:06PM / Wednesday, October 07, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — With just two positive COVID-19 tests in the last 14 days, the town is moving out of the yellow and into the gray in the commonwealth's weekly community-level data report. That means the Mount Greylock Regional School District does not have to move back to remote instruction for its three public schools. School officials and families were keeping a close eye on the weekly release of data from the commonwealth because of a trigger in the district's reopening plan. Williamstown Elementary, Lanesborough Elementary and Mount Greylock Regional School will go fully remote if either of the district's member towns are rated

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Mount Greylock Senior Announced As Semi-finalist In National Merit Scholarship Corporation

08:32AM / Thursday, October 01, 2020

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Mount Greylock Regional School senior, Michael J. Faulkner, was announced as a semi-finalist in the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program. Officials of National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced the names of approximately 16,000 Semifinalists in the 66 th annual National Merit® Scholarship Program. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $30 million that will be offered next spring. Mount Greylock Regional School senior, Michael J. Faulkner, was announced as a semi-finalist. To be considered for a

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