Clark Art Presents Book Talk With Poets

08:14AM / Monday, April 22, 2024Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, April 27 at 4 pm, the Clark Art Institute hosts a reading and conversation with poets Jessica Fisher and Mary Ruefle in its auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center.

The free event is presented in celebration of their new books, "Daywork" and "The Book," respectively.

According to a press release:

Fisher's third book of poetry, "Daywork" (Milkweed Editions, 2024), takes its title from the giornata—the fresco painting term for the section of wet plaster that can be painted in a single day. Fisher is an associate professor of English at Williams College. Mary Ruefle is a prolific writer of poetry and prose, including most recently "The Book" (Wave Books, 2023) and "Dunce" (Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. She is the poet laureate of Vermont.

Accessible seats available.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:57AM / Tuesday, August 25, 2026

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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