Montague Notebook: Nov. 13, 2023

Six Town Regionalization Planning Board holding pivotal business meeting

GILL — All towns represented by the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board will convene for a pivotal business meeting at Gill Town Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 14 to review assessments related to potentially merging the Pioneer Valley and Gill-Montague regional school districts.

Six Town Regionalization Planning Board Chairman Alan Genovese said the financial consultant Abrahams Group will present a number of different assessments to town officials using “a number of different methodologies” that help demonstrate the feasibility of regionalization. The board will then have an opportunity to ask questions and deliberate, but will likely “let that digest,” he said, until a subsequent meeting where they may vote on a recommendation to place regionalization on a future Town Meeting warrant. Tuesday’s meeting, while public, is not intended to field public input.

If the districts merge, which would require Town Meeting approval from all six towns, elementary school students would continue to attend their respective hometown schools, middle school students would go to Pioneer Valley Regional School in Northfield and high school students would attend Turners Falls High School in Montague.

While the financial struggle that all rural school districts are facing is one of the major points influencing the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board’s work, the driving force, according to Genovese, is the educational and professional development opportunities that would come with greater enrollment numbers. Larger enrollment could in turn bring in additional aid, while also enticing students and families to join the district.

Great Falls Discovery Center hosting intercultural heritage presentation

TURNERS FALLS — The Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Nolumbeka Project and author Christine DeLucia will hold a talk, titled “Knowledge, Sovereignty and Freedom in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast,” at the Great Falls Discovery Center on Nov. 18 from 1 to 3:30 p.m.

“The talk illuminates how individuals, families, and communities in the era of the American Revolution — and well before and after — conceptualized and pursued greater security, well-being, justice and liberation,” the event announcement reads. “In a time of tremendous upheaval, communities sought to maintain family integrity, homelands protection, personal and collective property, cultural self-determination and other priorities.”