Mount Greylock Study Group Recommends Regional Expansion

Union 71 Superintendent Rose Ellis, left, and Mount Greylock Regional School Committee members Carolyn Greene and Chris Dodig participate in Thursday's meeting of the Regional District Amendment Committee.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The committee formed to study expansion of the Mount Greylock Regional School District voted Thursday evening to recommend that the School Committee pursue a Grades PK-through-12 district.

But after five months of study, the Regional District Agreement Committee also decided that the elected School Committee continue studying the mechanism by which the Williamstown and Lanesborough elementary schools might be added to the existing junior-senior high school.

The ad hoc committee created by the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee held its final official meeting on Thursday, taking the opportunity to discuss the feedback it received at a pair of public forums earlier in the week.

Based partly on the feedback from Tuesday's meeting in Williamstown, several committee members expressed concern that the financial aspects of regional expansion need more study.

When the committee was faced with a straight up and down vote on whether to recommend PK-12 regionalization, three members of the 12-member panel voted against taking such a measure.

"I'm not in a position to take what seems to me like a very final vote," said Dan Caplinger, a member of the Williamstown School Committee who indicated he was not voting against regionalization but rather against the notion that all questions have been answered that need to be addressed.

Caplinger voted in the minority against an unequivocal recommendation to the Mount Greylock committee, which has the authority to ask Williamstown and Lanesborough voters to approve PK-12 regionalization at town meeting.

Later, Caplinger moved that the RDAC add a complementary recommendation that the Mount Greylock committee "move forward with further investigation of the PK-12 regionalization."

The RDAC voted 9-1-2 to send along Caplinger's recommendation along with its initial recommendation. The one member to vote against the "investigation" motion was Lanesoborough Finance Committee member Al Terranova, who made the initial motion to recommend regionalization without elaboration.

Terranova characterized Caplinger's motion as a "minority report" rather than a complement to his motion.

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