Library Board Only Race in Williamstown Election

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Voters in May will have one contested election on the ballot.
 
Four candidates have had their nomination papers certified for two available three-year seats on the Milne Public Library Board of Trustees in a race that voters will sort out when they go to the polls on Tuesday, May 12.
 
Janet Curran, Martin Mitsoff, Kathleen Schultze and Michael Sussman — all potential newcomers to the seven-person board — have been certified as candidates for the two open seats on the library's governing body.
 
Those two positions along with five other local government posts will be on the ballot for the annual town election.
 
For the Select Board, only incumbents Stephanie Boyd and Shana Dixon submitted papers to be returned to their three-year seats.
 
A third seat on the five-person board also is on the ballot. Newcomer Nathaniel Budington submitted papers to run for the final year on an unexpired term vacated by Jeffrey Johnson.
 
Two other candidates are running unopposed to retain their seats after Tuesday's deadline to submit nomination papers expired. Stephen Dew is running for another five-year seat on the Housing Authority, and Roger Lawrence is running for another five years on the Planning Board.
 
The last day to register to vote in the spring election is Friday, May 1. The last day to request a mail-in ballot is Tuesday, May 5.
 
In-person voting is scheduled for 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on May 12 at Williamstown Elementary School.
 
The annual town meeting — also open to all registered voters — is scheduled for Tuesday, May 19, at 7 p.m., at WES.
 
That meeting will make the final decision on the town's spending plan for fiscal year 2027, which begins July 1, and address several other issues, including: approval of the town's grants under the Community Preservation Act, proposed changes to the town's accessory dwelling unit bylaw to bring it into compliance with state law, a proposal that the town adopt provisions of the commonwealth's Seasonal Communities law and three articles submitted by way of citizens petition.
 
On Monday evening Town Manager Robert Menicocci told the Select Board that three sets of petitions were submitted by that day's deadline. One would ban the use of biosolids as fertilizer or soil amendments, one would expand the town's ban on second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides on town-owned land to include all private property and the third would amend the 2015's bylaw banning single-use plastic bags and polystyrene food containers, Select Board Chair Stephanie Boyd told her colleagues on Monday.

Tags: election 2026,   town elections,   

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee recently approved an updated policy on time-outs, seclusion and the physical restraint of students.
 
The policy is based on updated state regulations that came down last winter. Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the panel at its August meeting that his office waited on recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that were released in May and ran the proposed changes past the district's legal counsel.
 
That timing — and an expectation from the commonwealth that districts have the updated policy in place for the start of the 2026-27 academic year — led to an expedited process for the School Committee, which did not do a first read with a vote at a subsequent meeting as is its practice.
 
"Policy JKAA speaks to the ways the school district and our procedures shall abide by the updated state regulations," Bergeron said. "We're not going to have a lot of leeway.
 
"Nothing about the way we interact with our students on a day-to-day basis is being shifted by this."
 
For example, the commonwealth does not allow schools to use "seclusion," or, "the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area, with or without adult supervision," except some extreme cases, like when, "when student behavior poses an imminent threat of assault, or imminent serious physical harm to self or others, but only if safeguards are accounted for," the updated policy reads.
 
"From the state's perspective and my perspective, the idea of locking a child in a room without adult supervision is something we've never done," Bergeron said. "And it's something the state wants to make explicitly that nobody ever does."
 
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