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Williamstown School Committee Preps for Superintendent Uncertainty
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
09:22AM / Wednesday, November 19, 2014
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williamstown Elementary School Committee has set a special meeting for Monday, Nov. 24, but it hopes not to need it.
 
The committee at its monthly meeting last week discussed what would happen if the Tri-District partnership of Williamstown and Lanesborough public schools cannot agree on an interim superintendent when it meets on Friday afternoon at Mount Greylock Regional School.
 
"As a School Committee, we're part of a [superintendency] union, but there are a lot of things taking place that I'm concerned might put us at risk," School Committee member Richard Reynolds said in a meeting telecast on the town's community access television station, WilliNet. "On Jan. 1, we're obligated to have a superintendent.
 
"If you think about it, with Thanksgiving and Christmas, we're looking at a limited number of actual work days. At some point, there needs to be some metric that says when do we, as a school committee, step back and say we need to weigh our options.
 
"I don't want to be in violation of the law because of our dependence on a partner that might be in a position where they can't make that decision."
 
The partner in question is Lanesborough Elementary School, one of three legs of the Tri-District along with Williamstown and Mount Greylock, the junior-senior high school fed by both towns' elementary schools.
 
Although all three schools are independent school districts with separately elected school committees, the three share a common central administration in a two-stage arrangement. The elementary schools are yoked by Superintendency Union 71; Mount Greylock and SU71 share the cost of the central administration, which includes the superintendent, director of pupil services, business manager and support staff.
 
Throughout this year, Lanesborough's continued participation in SU71 has been in doubt. Two members of the three-person Lanesborough School Committee are on record advocating for the school's withdrawal. Lanesborough's Board of Selectmen this fall formed an ad hoc committee to study future affiliations for the town's elementary school.
 
The tenuous partnership concerns Williamstown committee members to varying degrees, according to their discussion at the Nov. 12 meeting in the school's library.
 
"If SU71 and Mount Greylock don't hire a candidates, we'll start taking action at that point," Committee Chairwoman Valerie Hall said.
 
Hall is one of three members of the five-person School Committee who also serves on the SU71 Committee along with all three elected committee members from Lanesborough. A successful interim superintendent would need four votes from the six-person SU71 Committee and four votes from the seven-person Mount Greylock School Committee, according to advice from the committees' legal counsel.
 
Three candidates are scheduled to be interviewed in a public session at Mount Greylock on Friday starting at 1:45 p.m. The Tri-District Committee hopes to have a decision by 5 p.m.
 
Whatever the outcome of Friday's meeting, Hall expressed concern about the future of the Lanesborough-Williamstown partnership under the SU71 umbrella.
 
"The discussion about SU-71 ... is definitely one where I'd appreciate feedback from the community either from letters or comments at a meeting," she said. "The objective is to bring into public our perspective on SU71 and how we see ourselves moving forward. One perspective might be not to make any changes unless we're forced to.
 
"Certainly, I think the question is open because our SU71 partner is repeatedly raising the question. Especially since we're beginning the search for a [permanent] superintendent, it seems time to talk about where SU71 is headed."
 
Committee members John Skavlem, Dan Caplinger and Chris Jones each said they were willing to let the process play out in Lanesborough before worrying about the dissolution of the union.
 
"I think it's had its difficulties, but until it breaks I'm willing to wait until it becomes completely dysfunctional," Jones said. "I think Mount Greylock [Regional School District] has had its share of conflict over the years, and it survives. I think we have to have the process play out.
 
"[SU71] is a very difficult relationship at times. Hopefully you can live with it. ... Do I accept that it could get to the point where it's broken? Yeah, it's definitely possible. But I'm in favor of waiting until the last possible minute before I throw the system out."
 
Hall indicated that she thinks the partnership already may be past the point of no return.
 
"I think it's acceptable for us to have different opinions," she said. "My feeling in the end is that ... it seems clear to me the [Lanesborough] community has one opinion, but the school committee there is no longer interested in working with us and has expressed that vocally.
 
"I think their actions of the last year and a half have stopped a lot of the forward progress we can make. When so much is focused on divisiveness, on personal attacks, on behavior that has ethical charges against it, it distracts the administration from moving the school forward. That's my concern."
 
Much of last Wednesday's meeting was focused on progress that Williamstown Elementary has made.
 
Principal Joelle Brookner and Superintendent Rose Ellis gave the committee their annual report on the pre-K-through-6 school's performance on the commonwealth's MCAS standardized tests.
 
Although Williamstown once again is categorized as a Level 2 school on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's five-level scale, Brookner was enthusiastic about the progress shown in the 2013-14 school year.
 
Brookner emphasized that the Level 2 designation is based on a measure of the school's success in closing the achievement gap between low-performing and high-performing pupils in two categories: general population and "high needs" students.
 
"We're a very high achieving school, and our percentile ranking is the highest in the county, but we're Level 2," Brookner said.
 
She pointed to specific areas of achievement like last year's third grade, where 93 percent of WES pupils scored proficient or higher on the MCAS math test.
 
The area where the school fell short was in the progress shown by high needs children.
 
The commonwealth defines high needs pupils as those from low-income families, English language learners and students with disabilities. DESE requires schools to hit a target of 75 on its Progress and Performance Index scale for both general population and high needs pupils in order to achieve Level 1 designation.
 
Last year, the general population easily cleared that hurdle with a score of 84 on the PPI scale, but it fell short in serving the high-needs group, which scored a 69, six points short of the target.
 
"That's an increase of 13 points from last year, which is tremendous," Brookner said. "From the year before, we're 19 points higher. I feel really proud about that.
 
"I'm really confident we're going to be Level 1 next year."
 
Brookner and Ellis discussed with the committee specific steps the school has taken and which the committee has supported financially to address the achievement gap. Those measures include the addition of another reading specialist, the use of a consultant to look at the school's math program and an after-school tutoring program in partnership with the Williamstown Youth Center, which two years ago opened a new facility on the school's campus.
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