NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The group studying the potential for regionalizing secondary education in North Berkshire went through next steps this week and established its leadership.

 

H. Jake Eberwein of Berk12, the consulting group selected to shepherd the project, laid out the three phases of the North Berkshire Educational Sustainability Study to the steering committee on Thursday. 

 

The first phase will be a in-depth baseline study of history, facilities, enrollment, finances, staffing, etc., including community engagement and focus groups; then analyzing, presenting and modeling all the data, and finally, providing recommendations for advancing a preferred model. 

 

The project is expected to take 10 to 12 months.

 

"There's no plot to create a one northern district," Eberwein said. "The answer will be developed in partnership with you all. And again, we were designing this process, and we saw it as a proposal really to explore the possibilities, which makes sense to you, all your families, your students, too, as you know better than us.

 

"We really have come to value the lived experiences of folks in the communities, and that is why we put such a premium on listening to the community early on in the process. It doesn't matter what solution you develop, but  if people don't want to do it, it's not going to happen."

 

The North Berkshire study, spearheaded by Hoosac Valley Regional School District and Northern Berkshire School Union, includes 10 communities, the North Adams Public Schools and Mount Greylock Regional School District. The effort is being funded by an initial $100,000 state grant, with another $100,000 secured in the recent supplemental state budget. 

 

The study is focused on Grades 6 through 12 even though, administrators acknowledged, its member districts define "secondary" education differently. Williamstown and Lanesborough, for example, send sixth-graders to their elementary schools; Hoosac Valley educates students in Grades 4 through 7 at the middle school.

 

It encompasses about 3,600 students, and or about a quarter of the county, said Eberwein, and 13 schools with a range of facilities. 

 

"For us, it's been super important that we get materials out to really high level of transparency, trying to put everything that we can share that with the community," he said. "Our mission really is to help schools and community partners come together and work together. We talk about short term and long term issues. 

 

"Short-term issues are opportunities where districts can work together on a short-term project. Long term are the things we're facing around demographic shifts, crimes, limited resources, limited state aid, things like that. So, some of the solutions are easy, and some are more complicated."

 

Berk12 has acquired a domain name for the project and will begin posting information to that site; its proposal is currently available on iberk12.org. The meetings are also open to the public in-person and virtually. The in-person meetings have been held at the neutral McCann Technical School, which is not part of the study. 

 

The former Pittsfield superintendent noted that Berk12 is the result of the Berkshire County Educational Task Force that was charged more than a decade ago to study educational options for a county seeing rising costs and declining enrollment. Its recommendation for a single countywide district was, at the time, probably "a step too far," Eberwein said, but the challenges outlined in the study haven't changed. 

 

The group focuses on four areas: collaborative projects, professional development, networking and advocacy and sustainability and strategic planning. Eberwein pointed to projects including Portrait of a Graduate, the Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont regionalization (which will be voting soon) and the South Berkshire regionalization that was ultimately rejected.

 

The steering committee was asked to vote on a chairs and create subcommittees for working with baseline data and community engagement and for project management with the superintendents. 

 

When no one stepped forward, Erin Milne of the Hoosac Valley School Committee volunteered and was swiftly voted in. Arleigh Cooper of the Savoy School Committee and Damon Grimes, representing North Adams as a parent, voted as co-vice chairs. The other members of the committee were asked to forward any preference for serving on the subcommittees to Milne. 

 

The next meeting of the full committee will the July 22 at 5 p.m.