Second of two parts.
Berkshire County Education Task Force Chairman William J. âBillâ Cameron Jr., also a Pittsfield School Committee member, recently retired from an extended 20-month tenure as interim Superintendent of the Lenox Public Schools.
Cameron had retired in 2014 as superintendent of the Central Berkshire Regional School District. Earlier, he had been assistant superintendent for personnel and negotiations for the Pittsfield public schools, superintendent of schools in Salem, and interim superintendent for Shaker Mountain School Union 70 (Hancock, New Ashford and Richmond).
In the second of a two-part conversation, he shares insights on countywide issues, including MCAS and other standardized tests, the impact of school choice on Pittsfield, Lenox and neighboring districts, and the prospects for collaboration among the countyâs school districts. Excerpts follow, edited for length.
Clarence Fanto | The Bottom Line: A chat with the outgoing interim superintendent in Lenox berkshireeagle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from berkshireeagle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
LENOX â Veteran eastern Pennsylvania educator and administrator Marc J. Gosselin has accepted a four-year contract as the new superintendent of the townâs public school district.
Under the terms of the agreement, Gosselin, 43, will start July 1, with a first-year salary of $160,000, followed by unspecified increases thereafter, committee Chairman Robert Vaughan told The Eagle.
He was selected unanimously by the School Committee on Jan. 29.
Second-place finisher Beth Choquette, a North Adams native and Cheshire resident who is an elementary school principal in Northampton, also had impressed School Committee members with a strong interview last week.
Gosselin, a native of Dracut in Eastern Massachusetts, was a finalist for superintendent of the larger Dover-Sherborn school district in Bostonâs western suburbs. But, the 15-member joint School Committee and superintendent search committee there failed to reach consensus at a meeting Monday, opting instead to gather mo
Last week, the School Committee took some time to look at the difficulties the district will face in the next 10 to 20 years. First-year Superintendent Jason McCandless used the opportunity of an often routine report on enrollment to talk about concerning long-term decline in student population that the two-town district can foresee over the next couple of decades. He pointed to projections from the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission that show the district s enrollment falling to 783 students, kindergarten through 12th grade, by 2030. That would be a loss of 296, or 27 percent of the current K-12 population of 1,079. McCandless said the BRPC has a good track record for predicting such population trends, and that the district needs to start thinking about what those impacts will be.