News&Notes from the Superintendent

Happy 2025!

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put the words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity, and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” – E. L. Pierce

This week’s quote beautifully symbolizes the limitless potential inherent in each new beginning, making it particularly relevant to education. Just as a blank book invites creativity and intention, every school year offers students, educators, and communities an opportunity to shape the narrative for learning and growth. The “first chapter” starting on New Year’s Day serves as a reminder that education is not static but rather a dynamic process, where each day presents an occasion to write a better, more inclusive story for all learners.

This blank book represents the power of choice and voice, and when students and educators are given the freedom to contribute to their learning journeys, they become authors of their own stories. Providing students with meaningful choices in what and how they learn fosters engagement, critical thinking, and a sense of ownership over their education. Similarly, empowering educators to innovate and share their expertise ensures that teaching is responsive to the unique needs of each classroom and community.

By emphasizing the importance of choice and voice, schools create an environment where every individual feels valued and heard. This approach aligns with the vision of preparing students for life beyond their K-12 experience, equipping them with the skills and confidence to navigate the blank pages of their future. Like the book of opportunity, schools thrive when they embrace diversity, imagination, and the collaborative effort of all stakeholders to craft a story of success and possibility.

Please find below this week’s updates & events happening in our District ~

Some news from Julie Kelley, Research Analyst, Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools:

The 194th General Court was sworn in on January 1st, and the bills are already starting to come in. Legislators have until January 17th at 5 p.m. to file their bills for this two-year legislative term. It is anticipated that 6,000+ bills will be filed, and Ms. Kelley will go through them all and pull out those with an education focus to share with us.

The process is as follows: Bills filed will remain at docket level until the committees are appointed by the House Speaker and Senate President, usually sometime in February. The dockets will then be given bill numbers and assigned to those committees. The joint committees then begin the process of holding hearings on the bills through February 4, 2026, which is the deadline for bills to be reported out of committee (unless they receive an extension).

The Governor, House Ways and Means and Senate Ways and Means have not yet agreed on a consensus revenue number for the FY26 budget. While the consensus agreement is typically made sometime in December, they do have a deadline of January 15th to finalize it. They could have been waiting for the December state revenue report to be filed by the Department of Revenue. The mid-month report came in well above benchmark, and the hope is that this remains the case in the final December report.

The Governor is expected to file her F26 Budget by Wednesday January 22, 2025. Once the Governor files her budget, the Joint Committee on Ways & Means will begin holding budget hearings throughout the state. Senate President Spilka has announced that K-12 Education funding reform will be a priority for the Senate this legislative term, which is very welcome news!

Budget season is in full swing at the state level, and as always, I will strive to provide the latest information to our school community as well as information on our local school budget process as it progresses.

Here are some other important items to highlight:

Task Force Initiatives ~

• Improving Attendance Task Force – (Facilitators: Julie Steuernagle and Paul Sullivan, with support from Sandi Hubbard.)
• Follow up work in progress: In the process of developing a parent/family survey, exploring the use of Wayfinder which supports Social Emotional learning for students, obtaining student feedback, and creating data and fact sheets on progress with attendance. The next meeting will be scheduled to discuss progress on the initiatives that were defined from the topics of conversation above.
  

• Cell Phone Policy Task Force – (Facilitators: Jesse Carpenter and Charles Miller, with support from Julie Dolan.)
• The proposed policy was made available to the Task Force members for comments and feedback. Our next steps will be to share it out District-wide for feedback. Finally, when the Task Force has incorporated the input from all stakeholders, the proposed cell phone policy will be sent to the Policy Subcommittee for review and a vote to be recommended to the full School Committee.
  

Both of these initiatives are ongoing, and I will have an updated status for next week’s edition of the News & Notes!

To review the documentation presented at the SBRSD hearing, please see the District website at https://www.sbrsd.org/documents/district/budgets/fy25-budget/567699 .

The Superintendent Advisory Councils (SACs) will resume at the end of January or first week of February and have much work to do! There are fundraising ideas that are in progress, and opportunities for students to take on leadership roles in some new programs including the Sandy Hook Promise. This program is a grant funded opportunity and partnership with the Attorney General’s Office in Massachusetts. We look forward to putting together a student-led team from SBRSD that will share their learnings with other students, participate in and facilitate activities around school culture and belonging, and help to bring assemblies to school as part of this effort. Acts of kindness are really important to the SACs! Students are also going to hear from local organizations on green practices and recycling efforts that we can take part in this spring!

Our Core Team meetings continue to happen weekly, and this Friday, members of the Design Team will be helping us prepare for the upcoming Community Team Meeting scheduled for January 28th! There is much work to do and the tremendous support from our school community is what will sustain our work and keep educational innovation as a cornerstone of the work in the District!

I wanted to share an exciting opportunity from our Transcend partners! On January 30th, at Transcend’s next Board meeting, the CEO, has asked to highlight Southern Berkshire’s story to help the Board dive deeper into the incredible work happening on the ground in practice! We will be working with our coach and other partners from Transcend to put together a presentation to share the incredible work our District has done to date and our plans for the future!

The website is updated so that members of the community can interact with all the happenings from the events we hold throughout the year!

A link to the Transcend Partnership page can be found here:

https://www.sbrsd.org/page/transcend-partnership

We encourage other members of our school community to join us in this work and share their thoughts and expertise as we continue our journey forward!

We extend our sincere gratitude to the Mount Everett alumni who generously shared their valuable experiences with our current students this month.

Before break, UME students participated in a whole school sing-along!

This time of year, there are fabulous things happening in our schools and we would like nothing more than to have you here to support our students alongside us!

The winter sport seasons are in full swing so please come out and support our athletes, and as always, we have many other events happening including Flying Cloud – Robots and Coding, Flying Cloud Girls Science Club, UME PTO Meeting, College Resource Lab, Girl Scouts, Vex Robotics, and Drama Rehearsals - just to name a few!

Take a look at our Early College course offerings below! Do you see a class that interests you? Talk with our Early College Coordinator, Lindy Marcel, and enroll now!

Interested in learning more about our Early College program? Visit our website!

Innovation Pathways offers opportunities for students to explore cutting-edge technology and in-demand fields! The program emphasizes real-world skills through career-focused experiential learning. Participants connect with industry mentors, go on field trips, get set up with internships in their areas of interest, and more!

Mount Everett currently offers two technical pathways in Advanced Manufacturing and Information Technology.

To learn more about our Innovation Career Pathways please use the links below! To express interest in learning more about Innovation Pathways please use our form - Expression of Interest Form

Before the winter break, Mount Everett started a new Industry Professional Residency Series. Special presenter, Daniel Drake talked with students about the Energy Sector, his work as an engineer, and his education experience.

This was a great opportunity for students to learn about a rapidly growing industry and hear one person's journey from starting at Mount Everett to running power plants here in Massachusetts!

Please feel free to reach out with questions or concerns as I welcome the opportunity to hear from you.

Best,

~ Dr. Beth Regulbuto, Superintendent of Schools