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I’m Running for Pittsfield School Committee!

Posted on by William Garrity

I am officially announcing that today I am “soft launching” my campaign for a seat on the Pittsfield School Committee, and I have pulled my nomination papers!

During my term as a student representative to the Pittsfield School Committee, I made a great impact on the role of student representative and how influential that role can be in improving the school experience for all the students in the Pittsfield Public Schools. After I graduated I intended to stay involved with the district, and I decided the best way to stay involved would be to run for a seat on the Pittsfield School Committee.

I am running on a platform that puts the needs of our students first. As a recent former student of the school system, I believe I can bring a unique perspective to the table to improve the Pittsfield Public Schools for all of our students. I am also running on a platform to increase transparency and accountability in the district, while also maintaining the School Committee’s reputation of positively working together to bring change to the school system, even if we all don’t agree on the best path forward. And I am running on a platform to ensure that all of our staff earns a livable wage and to build trust between our teaching and support staff and district administration.

Over the coming weeks I will be preparing for a full campaign launch including a release of my full platform and ways to help support my campaign. In the meantime if you have any questions, want to sign my nomination papers, or want to get involved with my campaign feel free to reach out using my contact information below!

Contact Information:

Email (Prefered): william.garrity@wgarrity.com

Phone: (413) 329-9556

Twitter: @wgarrity_ma

Facebook: William Garrity for Pittsfield School Committee

Instagram: @wgarrity_ma

Taconic Becoming a Fully Vocational School: How did we get here? (Part 1)

Posted on by William Garrity

This is the first big blog post I have done on this site, so lets see how this goes!

I have been somewhat out of the loop for the past few months on where things stand regarding Taconic’s transition to a fully vocational school. This was an issue that popped up during my tenure as a student representative, but because it came close to the end of my tenure I didn’t get to discuss it that much (even though I tried to get a discussion on having the transition start in the fall of 2022 on the agenda before I left for various reasons). And because of my busy schedule this past fall I wasn’t really able to keep up with the Pittsfield School Committee that much. But as this is an important topic and that I received word from the district that the School Committee will be voting on turning Taconic into a fully CTE school at their January 25th meeting, I think it is a really good time to delve right back in and see where we are at.

But first, lets review how we actually got to this point. I’m going to start from the March 23rd School Committee meeting as that is when the School Committee seriously started to consider transitioning Taconic to a fully vocational school (and we need somewhere to start). Though I should point out there was a presentation given on this matter at the July 14th, 2021 School Committee meeting (timestamp 39:45 – 1:38:47) which does have a little bit of background information though that information is repeated throughout future presentations.

Continue reading “Taconic Becoming a Fully Vocational School: How did we get here? (Part 1)”