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North Adams Council Hears Presentation on Education Report
By Tammy Daniels, iBerkshires Staff
01:16AM / Wednesday, November 23, 2016
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MCLA's Jake Eberwein and Cynthia Brown, both members of the Berkshire County Education Task Force, presented the task force's findings to the City Council.


The council's meeting was brief on Tuesday. Councilor Nancy Bullett was absent.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The City Council on Tuesday got an abbreviated reading on the 77-page report detailing the challenges facing the county's school districts.

The Berkshire County Education Task Force is briefing dozens of school committees and select boards around the county to update them on the conclusions of the first phase of the task force's work.

"We've been meeting every three weeks for almost two years now to really explore this question of what's happening in our schools, how to try to respond to the financial pressures," task force member H. Jake Eberwein told the council. "But more importantly, how to position our K-12 system to be highest quality educationa system we could possibly have in light of all the pressures we face."

The conclusions of the report by the University of Massachusetts' Donahue Institute confirmed much of what school and local officials were seeing: declining enrollment and rising costs.

Enrollment is down 22 percent countywide in the last 15 years while expenditures are up 27 percent over the past decade and revenues are flat. It also drilled down to look at staffing, special education, underutilized buildings, losses in programming, state education funding, rising salaries and health insurance, and looming levy ceilings.

"All of this together is resulting in the reduction of range and diversity in educational programs," said task member Cynthia Brown, such as arts, electives, vocational opportunities, honors courses, athletics, extracurricular activities and scheduling conflicts. "One of the things that is very clear is this picture is going to continue. ...

"One premise is that doing nothing is going to lead to further economic and programmatic pressures on our schools and our districts."

Eberwein, dean of graduate and continuing education at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and former  superintendent of the Pittsfield Public Schools, and Brown, MCLA vice president of academic affairs and a trustee of Berkshire Arts and Technology Public Charter School, are two of about 27 task force members representing every town/district in the county.

"There's no question when you travel the county that probably this is the most important issue that folks are concerned about," said Eberwein. "They're concerned about the delivery and quality of what we do and how do we afford this."

This first phase was funded by participating towns and districts. The second phase, funded by the state, will look build on the data compiled to date and offer models for communities and districts to consider.

Brown said Gov. Charlie Baker met with the task force earlier this fall and guaranteed the $150,000 in funding to pursue the second phase. That report is expected to be completed by next June.

"This means that communities will be able to take action to affect FY2019 budgets," she said.

Among probable solutions are expanding collaborations, forming partnerships or regionalizing with neighboring districts, or creating one or more "super regions" out of the 19 current districts.

The models will look at the educational implications, the expense and the logistical factors, said Brown, noting that transportation can be challenging in the Berkshires.

"No one thing is going to be all benefits or all barriers ... we will meet with stakeholder groups on how to talk about these models," she said.

Eberwein pointed out that the task force has no authority to shape the county's educational future; rather, its mission is to data and models from which communities can develop sustainable solutions.

Councilor Kate Merrigan noted that the report did not show that regionalization would be a sure moneysaver.

Communities would have to weigh the benefits, said Eberwein, and go through the exercise of modeling potential impacts. "Putting these two communities together might not solve either's financial problems."

Both task force members also acknowledged that the Massachusetts School Building Authority did not seem to be on the same page as the task force. The state agency has provided funding for a number of high school projects just in the past few years, including Hoosac Valley, Mount Greylock and Taconic, and has invited Wahconah into the program. Monument Mountain was also approved but voters rejected the project.

Eberwein said the task force has not taken a stand on the MSBA, seeing it as political and feeling it does not yet completely understand the situation. That may change, he said.

In other business, two proposed ordinances, one on solar array sitings and the other on added authority for the Public Arts Commission, were postponed on motions by Councilor Eric Buddington until Dec. 13.

The council also set Dec. 13 for a tax classification hearing.

Gene Carlson was appointed to the Local Historical District Study Committee to replace Josh Colon.

Council President Benjamin Lamb read correspondence from the state indicating its interest in purchasing 115 acres next to Clarksburg State Forest.

Resident Peter May called on the council to condemn the President-elect Donald Trump's hiring of Breitbart New executive Steve Bannon as his chief strategist. There is "no place for neo-Nazis in our government," May said, "no other time in our lifetime has our country needed us more."

BCETF Phase One Final Report by iBerkshires.com on Scribd

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