Saturday, October 10, 2015

Berkshire County's Failed Regional School System

No one in Berkshire County wants to admit that the great ‘centralized school district’ experiment has been a huge failure.
It’s been a fiscal and educational disaster for decades, since the very beginning.
Long overdue for example is the total dissolution of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District (aka SBRSD) so the present member towns -- there are five -- can go back to building and maintaining schools within each respective town.
Control of budgets, hiring, and curricula would be back in the hands of the voters in these towns where such decisions belong.
Other benefits: Transportation costs would be slashed along with the amount of time utterly wasted daily in just getting to school.
Overall savings would be enormous.

People seem to forget that for generations these same small towns had, set along back roads, one-room schoolhouses within which multiple grades were taught providing students with excellent one-on-one education and much 'cross-pollination' of thought and ideas.
Compare the educational output of what once was to the Berkshire mega-schools of today.
Sometimes smaller is better.

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