The
Greylock Echo interview:
Supt. William Travis
EDITORS’ NOTE -- As he prepared for his first year at Mount Greylock
Regional High School, in Williamstown, Mass., Supt. William Travis sat down at
his office roundtable on Aug. 22, 2005 for an interview with Greylock Echo
staffers Isa St. Clair, Carl Kubler and Rachel Payne. Echo advisor Bill
Densmore also asked a couple of questions during the session, which was
videotaped for cablecast on WilliNet and for distribution in Lanesborough. An
MP3 audio version is at: http://www.newshare.com/echo/travis_interview.mp3.
An edited transcript follows.
Q: What about Mount Greylock has surprised you?
A: I don’t know about surprised, but I’ve met with
the School Building Needs Commission and I’ve attended the presentation that the
Williams College students did about the short-comings of the building. And so I
guess I was focused on some of the deficits of the building. Over the summer I
had the chance to…confirm [the need for] renovation or a new building…But I’m
also surprised by how sturdy and appropriate some of the space is in the
building, and that’s been a pleasant surprise.
Q: What in the
new school year are you looking forward to?
A: I think there are a lot of things that I want to
get a lot of information about. Part of it is what excites students about the
school, what excites faculty about teaching, and to try to find ways to support
and encourage those activities…One of the things I hear repeatedly and that I
have my own impressions of is that the rotating schedule presents a problem.
One of the positives that I hear goes in the direction of a faculty member can
see a student and a student can see a faculty member at a different time of the
day and students and faculty are day people or afternoon people… [Students] may
present themselves better or do better in class at a different time of the day.
I think that it’s far outweighed by the inconvenience that it presents to
students who may want to have opportunities beyond the four corners of the room
…With a schedule that rotates, it would be tough to say that ‘I’m going to take
a class at 10 o’clock in the morning at MCLA or Berkshire Community College or
Williams and return and know that I’m going to get English class in the
afternoon.’ So I really want to see how the rotating schedule works and really
learn if there are more advantages to it than meets the eye . . . .
Q: And you’ve made the decision to keep the rotating
schedule for this year?
A: We are rotating, and that is because of the
teachers’ contract and the way that the workday is defined by the contract.
Q: What is
your experience with and opinion of block scheduling?
A: We’ve looked at it on a number of occasions in my
previous job, and we’ve gone to a number of districts and observed a whole
variety of block schedules. In some cases, the entire day is a block schedule,
and in others one or two courses are blocked. So you might have an hour and a
half in science class or in a math module, but everything else in the course of
the day would then divert to a typical 45- or 50-minute period. There are
advantages and disadvantages of that; obviously, with a longer time, in science
class in particular, you get in the lab, make sure you have time to set up an
experiment, actually do it, take things apart, and put things away, safely . .
. there are real advantages there.
What happens, though, is classes in social studies
and English feel [that they] could use a writing lab for an extended period.
So, what courses are you going to put into a block? So I think that there are
some attractive features about a block [schedule], but I don’t know whether it
advantages or disadvantages some departments. So, the smaller the school, in
terms of number of students, the fewer options you have. I don’t want to get
into a block [schedule] before finding out that if you get into a block, you
cut out electives. But there are some real advantages to giving kids extended
time to think and work . . . .
Q: How do you
plan to interact with students on a daily basis?
A: Well, I’m going to be right by that front door in
the morning. It’s sort of like welcoming a new guest to your house: I think you
have to be out there and introduce yourself and get to know people, and after
that it would be like having another brother or sister in the house…I treat
this as a home. I ought to be out there, really getting to know students as a
routine, and as time goes on, how I will interact with students will change.
I’d like to be in a lot of classrooms, observing what’s going on so I can find
out…about the things that really work and don’t work about the school. So,
whether that’s in the morning, or at lunch in the cafeteria, or after school
for activities…I would really like to get out there and see kids. A school is
more than just what goes on in a class. It’s how the kids interact with each
other in the hall, what they want to do for the school in terms of school
spirit and other activities. If you don’t see the things that go on in the
afternoon or the evenings or the weekends, you don’t really know the whole
student. So, I want to get out there and see those things.
Q: What do you see as the role of the teachers’
union?
A: A union has a responsibility to look at the needs
of the teachers in terms of their workday, their work expectations. [Along with
that] there’s the right to organize and to discuss issues. [The teacher’s
union] is a group that the administration and the school committee can deal
with in order to work issues out. I think the union is an appropriate way to .
. . work with officers on issues about school policy, about the school day, and
those things which are closer to someone’s heart, such as their salary. So
there’s an important role for the union.
Q: How can
Mount Greylock improve its relationship with the towns it serves?
A: A couple of parents that I met this summer had a
very interesting observation. They happened to be people who moved to
Williamstown or Lanesborough within the last six years . . . They got involved,
as parents will, with activities, and they got to know other parents, some of
whom had grown up in Williamstown and Lanesborough, and had gone to Mount
Greylock themselves. And they found, surprisingly, that a lot of these parents
had never really been back to Mount Greylock, and their memory of it was ‘Oh,
what a wonderful school. It doesn’t need any improvements. Just look at the
view as you drive by on Route 7. Gosh, everything must be absolutely wonderful
there.’ They haven’t been back on campus in a long time, and I think that says
a lot about the school not really being in Williamstown and not being easy for
adults who don’t have children . . . really think about the school . . . I
think it would be really good to find some way to bring back the alumni who
still happen to live in the feeder towns. [There’s been the idea that] rather
than the work day this fall, maybe we could…have the school do something for
the community. Maybe we can do something as simple as having a softball game
with graduates of Greylock from the ‘90s versus the graduates of the ‘80s.You
know, bring them back so they can actually see the campus, go through the
building . . . we could have a cookout or a bonfire, something to bring the
parents, or adults who don’t have kids here, back onto the campus as a way for
Greylock to recognize that it has served these people well . . . So, I think
that’s really tough, and physically the farther away you are, the harder it is
to get kids back to do things after school . .
. .
There are other things that I plan to do. That is to
go to some school committee meetings for Lanesborough and for Hancock and
Williamstown. Even though they’re elementary schools, many of those parents
will be sending kids this way . . . particularly in Hancock and Lanesborough,
maybe the elementary school can serve at the center for seventh through 12th
graders as a place where if they need a library, [high-school text books] could
be delivered there, so it’s easier for parents to pick them up. It might be a
place for offering tutoring, so if a high-school student wants to mentor
another student who lives in Hancock, they could meet the student there rather
than travel back up here.
In addition to that, the superintendents from
Lanesborough and Hancock and Williamstown and I will be meeting regularly to
look at the program of studies for the elementary schools, to see what other
things we can do to have a program of studies which brings all kids into
seventh grade with a more uniform program of studies . . . .
There’s also a study going on now to talk about
whether the regions ought to be reconfigured and possibly come up with a K -12
region, whether that is just between Williamstown Elementary and Mount Greylock
as a K-12 new district, or whether that ought to be a K-12 district involving
Hancock and Lanesborough and Williamstown . . . That has a lot a of
ramifications for whether you only need one superintendent instead of three,
but there you have a superintendent who’s responsible for elementary education
instead of just middle and high school education. There are many things for the
communities to consider.
There might be some programmatic changes that having
a K-12 district would bring about that would relate to some of the items that
you [Rachel Payne] raised in The Echo last year . . . I think there was an edge
to [the Great Divide editorial] that suggested that the gap was one of
academics as well as one of group dynamics among students, and part of that may
be addressed in a study of the programs that occurs before the students are
seventh graders. So one of the other things we’re thinking about is bringing
the sixth graders onto the campus during the course of the year so all of a
sudden they’re not afraid of walking in the halls, the idea that they’re going
to have a locker, that they’re not going to have a recess. So, we can dispel a
lot of those things, and kids will know each other a little in advance. We’re
going to look at the possibility of bringing the kids in and we’ll talk about a
social getting-together as friends or pen-pals as well as addressing the
program of studies. So I think there are two aspects of what you unveiled in
your article and I think we need to address both. It’s not just academics and
it’s not just social interactions.
Q: In the past, you’ve mentioned that you are
opposed to user fees. Do you still hold that position?
A:
Well, if all things were equal, I would like to see the regular school budget
cover those expenses, but when it comes between some user fees and keeping
activities versus no user fees and only those activities that can pay for
themselves, I would rather see a universal activity fee . . . and there’s a
procedure where anyone who feels that they can’t afford the activity is given a
reduced cost or no cost. So, there are some protections . . . Having
experienced user fees now for several years, I think there’s a sense of
ownership. Because I know, at least in my experience, that a number of students
take that money from summer jobs or some other services provided in the family
in order to come up with the money, and I think that might help them invest a
little into the activity that they’re in. So, while I would like to see them go
away, I think they are reasonably priced right now and there are precautions
for people who can’t afford it.
Q: What do you consider to
be Mount Greylock’s fiscal challenges, and how do you plan to face them?
A: I attended the summer superintendents’ conference
and there were some encouraging signs. There will be a slight increase in the
Chapter 70 money that is distributed, probably on the order of about $50
dollars per student . . . Part of that is because of positive revenues in the
state, so there are new monies coming in from our taxes, so the economy is
beginning to come back. So that may change some of the projections that seemed
right on target a year ago or 18 months ago when the state was still finding
itself with a structural deficit. It may in fact be finding its way out of it.
The other thing that’s changing will be the way the
state has borrowed lots of money for school projects . . . One percent of the
sales tax will be set aside for school renovation projects and so the state
won’t find itself borrowing literally billions of dollars for school projects;
those will be paid off and now there will be another system in place for school
aid. If the state doesn’t have to borrow money it has more money, then, to put
into education. This is really the most positive way of looking at change. It’s
got to come from state and federal resources. The property tax is a very
regressive way of trying to fund education.
The other piece about that is that the state is
playing with a formula which will look at the average income of a town as
opposed to the average wealth of real estate. All you have to do is pick up a
newspaper; there was an article today about somebody who just bought 60 acres
of land in Williamstown for $1.5 million and wants to develop several houses
which will be very expensive. So, the value of property in Williamstown and
Lanesborough and Hancock is very high, but that doesn’t match the income of the
people who have lived there for 10, 20, 30 or more years. Their salaries don’t
match the value of their property, if they were to sell and move. So, now we
look at how much money Mount Greylock would be entitled to based on the average
income in the communities, and then there would be more state aid coming to the
district. And, there was also talk today, there’s going to be a constitutional
convention in Massachusetts to address healthcare, and so the projections of
12-14 percent increases in the price of healthcare may dramatically be affected
by another type of insurance.
So, that begins to pull down some of the real
negative factors that were driving the budget to go out of wack in the Williams
projections and it may increase the revenue stream of the other side and pull
those things together a little bit more.
Now, the school committee has a beautiful piece of
property right here, and whether there are other uses that the property might
afford that would generate some income, I don’t know…[According to a local
newspaper] Mount Everett High School has an auditorium that was the home for
Barrington Stage Company and now they’ve moved to a new location. But that
generated revenue of about $20,000 a year for the use of the stage in the
summer when the school wasn’t fully in use. It might not be a bad idea to look
at other uses for this property, either for conferences or for other activities
that might generate some revenue . . . .
Q: What are your thoughts on the possibilities of
renovation and replacement of the school building?
A: [The School Building Committee] has gotten to the
stage where they are putting out a proposal to have an architect come in and
look at the evidence that has been gathered so far, pros and cons about the current
status the building, and renovation with a small addition versus a total
renovation. I think that the committee has people with a great variety of
people on it: some architects, some engineers, some planners. There’s the
contribution of the Williams College students . . . the presentation that they
made at the end of the year, it was pretty neat . . . there are clearly a
number things that need to be addressed, but I think they got them all out on
the table.
So, I think an architect now looking at the pros and
cons that were developed can advise the committee pretty well on next steps.
Now, because of the value of the building, the first step in any process would
be [to determine] what can be done to renovate the existing facility. I think
the second one is [deciding] if you can renovate the existing facility and
maybe through some construction make the kind of improvements that would keep
down the cost. Then, the third would be a totally new building, but using the
current real estate that the district has. And only if for some reason all
three of those were to strike out would you begin to look at building a new
facility . . . The cost of every one of those goes up . . . when you look at
this as a family of tax-paying communities, you would look at your own house
[and consider] can you repair what you have? If not, can you repair and add? If
not, build new, and can you afford . . . to do it some place else?
Q: Will you
wait for Greylock’s fiscal recovery before beginning renovations?
A: Part of that is generated by the state moving to
a new way of funding school projects…no community can afford to do this all by
themselves. [In] the old formula for renovating schools, every community was
eligible for a certain percentage of the cost to be paid for by the state. In
some communities it was 60 percent…Pittsfield renovated with about 68 percent
back. Disadvantaged communities got 90 percent back because locating a school
might solve other problems like breaking up communities that cause students to
be racially forced into certain schools, as opposed to, if they place a school
[elsewhere] maybe they can draw people from a number of communities. In order
to desegregate schools like that, the state would repay 90 percent of the cost
of rebuilding.
So, there are about 300 school projects that need to
be completed and paid for before new projects will go on the state list. So, I
see the chances of doing anything significant being at least three or four
years down the road. That doesn’t mean that we can’t have the plans in place
and get those approved. Then you go on a list, and as school projects are
funded, your number moves down that list. So, it would be prudent to decide
what we want to do, find out how much reimbursement the district would be
entitled to and then plan that way.
Now, in the mean time, do windows have to be
replaced to be more energy efficient? Does wiring for the Internet need to [be
kept up to date?]...There are a number of costs like that, so that maybe . . .
renovation could proceed with the local tax-base as it is.
Q: What are
the latest developments in the water crisis?
A: There have been a number of meetings over the
summer looking at a possible solution and right now the most likely arrangement
would be using wells on the property owned by the nursing home and we’re
exploring the mechanics of getting water to the school, how to monitor the
quality of the water, and making arrangements to make sure that if we were to
have this arrangement with the nursing home, that they have all the water for
their current and future needs so that this isn’t something where you invest a
lot of money and get started for a year or two and then find that you have to
undo it. So, I think we have in concept something that the nursing home . . .
is willing to work out an arrangement. The school committee is willing to use
the money that we got from the state to help come up with a permanent solution
for the water problem, and now we’re looking at how does that . . . guarantee
the protections on the school-committee side . . . and for the nursing home and
the hospital [and ensure] that they have adequate resources for the future. I
hope that those talks are coming to a good conclusion very quickly. That means
that by the end of September, there may be a permanent solution in place.
Q: What with all its problems, why were you drawn to
Mount Greylock?
A: Well, you know when you put all those problems
aside and as you get to live in a community, you learn that there are problems
of different types. Then you start looking at the strengths and one of the
things that I have wanted to do for a very long time is to get in closer touch
with faculty and students. I couldn’t think of a better place than Greylock,
given both its size and I was a junior high-school and high-school teacher, so
it fits my background as opposed to an elementary school. So it has a lot of
things that attracted me. I can get closer in touch with the program of studies
. . . and I have the advantages of getting back in touch with faculty and
students.
Q: This year, students are allowed to waive gym in
either their junior or their senior year, while in the past, individuals in
rigorous academic classes could waive it for two years. What are your thoughts
on gym waivers?
A: One only has to take a look at the health of
Americans in general to know that kids and adults are heavier, more sedentary,
[and go] without some type of regular, rigorous activity . . . and I think the
fact that Greylock calls their program a wellness program speaks to the kind of
activities kids are engaged in. It’s not just basketball, and at my age . . . I
might be a little slow on the court these days, so that’s not a lifelong
activity . . . I think there’s a real goal for physical activity in any program
and the reason other districts have less of it than Greylock is because,
frankly, of budget cuts. They have less music and less art, and those are the
activities that people have found easier to eliminate. The reverse is true in a
smaller school district.
Having physical education classes available in all
four years has a place to put students when their schedule fits around their
other courses, and you can put a student into physical education and the class
size can grow because of types of activities kids are engaged in. So, in one
sense, the requirement is here because it fills an important role in the
overall schedules of students . . . Greylock students have more physical
activity than most students in other middle and high schools, where they have
physical education two or three times a work only. So I think there are good
grounds to have trade offs, but I also don’t think that any school system that
has its full funding capability would ever do away with a rigorous program of
activities for kids to get involved in.
Q: Greylock students attend 990 hours of school each
year – the minimum required by the state. Would it be beneficial or even
possible to add hours to the school day?
A: Well, when you look at the expectations for your
generation, the type of skills you’re going to need in the future, I think it
speaks volumes about the need for a different instructional program, whether
that’s a longer day or a longer year. I think it’s coming, but all that costs
money, and so the trade off now is, how can a local community pay for that
additional time? And that’s the real draw back. I think that every student
ought to have four years of science, and it ought to be rigorous science, and
they ought to have four years of math. We don’t have four years of math here: a
lot of kids take four years of math, but it’s not a requirement. But whenever
you do that, you have to realize that students grow and mature at different
rates, and so you need to have alternative ways to get there. And so whether
that’s a 200-day school year for some students, so that they can take maybe one
less course and go on a tri-semester rotation, or a summer program, or they
could get there because they want to do some community service and won’t give
up a class and so they go a longer school year. There’s no reason why students
have to view high school as something you complete in four years. It could be
five years, it could be three years . . . .
It’s going to come, but it’s going to cost money . .
. Going along with a longer day or a change in the kind of program that
students have, you have to either hire faculty with new skills . . . or you
have to hire additional faculty in order to cover all the new periods of
instruction. So that’s going to cost immediate money, and I don’t see that
coming out of the way education is funded right now. You could take a
percentage of what the country is spending on the war right now and put it into
education and look at the competition that you all are going to have as you
grow up and become responsible citizens. War is not the right term, but a
definite competition from countries all around the world. I think we have to
put more resources in your hands and we’re not able to do that right now.
Q: I read in
the Berkshire Eagle a couple of days ago that the Massachusetts Department of
Education (DOE) has made a proposal to increase the regular school day by 30%,
and they’re giving out a few grants. Are you considering applying for that?
What do you think about that?
A: One of the things we learned at the
superintendents’ conference this summer and we don’t think that the article
really go into was the fact that the grants are really going to be targeted
towards urban districts that have a number of underperforming schools. These
are schools where it’s very difficult to even have the minimum number of math
classes in order to do well on the MCAS test. So you’ll have a number of
students who will go through some schools with business math, really
arithmetic, maybe algebra I by the time they’re in 10th or 11th
grade, and not have any exposure to geometry,
algebra II, let alone trigonometry. As you know from your own experience with
the MCAS test, questions like that are on there. So as a result, middle schools
or high schools are falling into the underperforming category. And so the thought
is that with a longer school day you could now add a math module and have the
required three or four years of math. So you need extra time either in the
length of the day or the length of the school year to get those extra courses
in. So the money right now is really going to those districts that really need
the time in order to bring students up to the current testing expectations, and
to let them play with the schedule, and the money is really going to an
elementary school with a middle school. We can expand the day so that whenever
we make those changes it will be over a number of years so that those
elementary kids will move into the middle school and so they both have a longer
day or a longer year and they fit together. Or the grant will go to a middle
school with a high school so that either school will affect the high school
schedule for a number of years to come, not just a single school playing with
the day going longer or going more days in the year. So the first steps are
going to be taken by urban districts, the Lowells, the Holyokes, the Bostons,
that’s really where the first round of that grant money is going to go.
Q: On that
note, where do you see the picture of extended learning?
A: Right now the extended-learning minutes when you
add it up come up with the 990 minutes. So my own thought is that the first
thing we ought to look at is converting that extended time into the time for
the current seventh periods. I like the concept of an extended learning period,
but I don’t know that it serves students or faculty well the way it rotates.
Students can take advantage of it for additional help or studying as they
choose, but I’m not sure that use, as opposed to academic instruction under the
direction of a faculty member, is the best use of the time.
Now, if there were 990 minutes plus an extended period
(and that sort of gets to a longer day or a longer year) I think that time
would be very valuable. I’d love to see the library used at the end of school
for homework help and maybe staff and students are willing to help other
students and use email or the Internet to post homework assignments so that
students who came in there and needed the extra help, and make sure they have
their work. Whoever was going to tutor could see the assignments as well and
help out. So if that were built into the day and if we could get students home
(with transportation and so on) that would be a wonderful extension of the day.
Q: If we were
to go that way would that really be such an expense? Because aren’t teachers
being paid for 990 hours of
real teaching as it is and they’re not teaching during that additional 30
minutes? But if they were to teach through extended learning, tacking on those
extra 30 minutes at the end of the day, where would the expenses be, except for
keeping the library open, for example?
A: It disrupts a number of things, not the least of
which is transportation. The buses, as you know, pick up students here at
Greylock, then have to get the kids home and be at the elementary schools to
pick up the students there, and do a second run. So just saying well, we can
add on 30 minutes at the end of the day, it means that kids in the elementary
school aren’t being picked up and brought home. So there are a lot of other
things that cross into the course of a day that need to be addressed before
just looking at that as a solution.
And the other thing is, look at, for instance, the
athletic schedules and a longer day. I know high-school kids like to sleep in
while elementary school kids are having breakfast and turning on the computer,
television, reading at six o’clock in the morning; why not just flip the times?
Well, one of the problems is that when you have an athletic program and you
count on daylight for your outdoor activities whether that is in the fall or
the spring, then the time for practice and traveling competitions is very
difficult to manage. It would be easier if there were several high schools that
would do it at the same time so that everyone’s doing the same thing. Just an
extended day for us would cause a real problem for students involved in those
kinds of activities.
Q: You
mentioned the cost of our military involvements and what that might do if spent
on education instead. In your experience in Pittsfield, can you talk a little
bit about how you have managed the relationship between military recruiters and
the school, and whether that’s different in how that’s handled here, and
whether you think it is appropriate for a school district to allow counter
recruiters equal access to students?
A: As you know the requirement came about because of
the federal legislation in No-Child-Left-Behind, and basically a school
district can’t take federal money without providing a list of student names and
addresses so that that can be made specifically available to military
recruiters or other government purposes. Greylock gets an excess of $200,000
and Pittsfield got an excess of $4 million in federal dollars, so as you can’t
turn those dollars aside, you buy into that requirement.
Prior to No-Child-Left-Behind I think the
relationship with military recruiters was one where they were welcome just as
any other college admissions officer coming to do an informational session.
They had a place in the guidance [office] and they would post that [for
instance] the Marine Corps was going to interview students and they’d be
available in guidance, and that Amherst College and Berkshire Community College
would be there the following day. They came in just as anybody else did.
I think the thing that a number of people find wrong
with the current [recruiter situation] is that now the addresses are something
that must be released. Now, you are advised in the Student Handbook and parents
are also advised that they can remove your name from that list. But you have to
actively go and do it. My own sense is that the military under those
circumstances has a free ride. They automatically can come in, as opposed to
saying “I’ve got 10 high schools in Berkshire County and I can hit 2,000 students
one day if I went to two high schools in Pittsfield as opposed to 500 if I went
to Mt. Greylock.” They might make a decision just like a college [would].
Someone just isn’t making that decision anymore. They’ve got the names of kids
they can call, they can write [to], they can mail, and they can also come on
campus. I think it’s that, that is the damage a number of people object to.
Having said that, I don’t know if there’s any reason
not to let anyone make an appointment who wants to talk to students, anyone who
has a program that students can sign up for. I think kids need to be informed
and make wise choices, and one of the ways you learn about that is to actually
experience it. My sense with counter recruiters is really what I read about in
the paper as opposed to any particular initiative or effort, so as opposed to
getting students down and not being able to offer them anything in particular,
I don’t know what that counter recruiter thing is.
So I think it’s the kind of thing you have to experience
and see what a particular group might want to offer. Everyone else has
something that has a career decision that a student can make; so if someone
wants to come in for the Peace Corps, or if someone wants to come in for
Habitat for Humanity, or anything like that as an alternative, I think that
that would be a fair group to post opportunities and let students come in and
see them.
END OF
INTERVIEW