With its regional agreement sent off to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for a technical review, the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board is expecting to bring its new school district proposal to voters in the fall.

The board, comprised of at least two representatives from each town and a non-voting Erving member, approved sending its draft agreement to DESE on April 29 and is awaiting the results, which will likely not come for several weeks. Once the review is complete and any requested changes are made, the document will come before the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board once more for a vote.

If approved by the board, the regional agreement is expected to come before Bernardston, Gill, Leyden, Montague, Northfield and Warwick voters at separate Special Town Meetings in the fall.

“We’re starting the next steps now,” Six Town Regionalization Planning Board Co-Chair Alan Genovese said Tuesday, adding that community outreach will be a key aspect. “It will go back to the Planning Board and then it will vote to send the final document to the towns. If it passes all six towns, then the next step would be a transitional school committee.”

Public outreach has already started, with one-page handouts being dispersed at Annual Town Meetings this spring explaining the background of the Planning Board and how the rest of the process will play out over the next seven months or so. Other outreach efforts will include community forums, flyers in public buildings and documents on the board’s website, sites.google.com/view/strpb/home.

The review of the district agreement brings the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board one step closer to its goal of presenting a new regional school district that would combine the Gill-Montague and Pioneer Valley regional school districts, as well as Warwick Community School, into one entity. The board was formed by the towns in 2019 and its progress was slowed by the pandemic.

If the “super-regional” school district forms, high school students would attend Turners Falls High School and middle school would be held at Pioneer Valley Regional School in Northfield. The local elementary schools would continue to operate.

Genovese highlighted two key aspects in the regional agreement that he said he hopes will pass DESE’s review: a pathway for other towns or school districts to join the district, and when closing a school is on the table, the community itself must vote to close it.

If a community votes against closing its school, then it could take another vote to maintain its school, with that town then picking up the expenses.

Once an approved regional agreement comes before the six communities at the fall Special Town Meetings, all six towns must approve it to form the new district.

A similar process occurred in Berkshire County in 2023, where eight towns considered merging the Berkshire Hills and Southern Berkshire regional school districts. That merger, though, was shot down by four of the towns, including an overwhelming rejection in Sheffield, according to the Berkshire Eagle’s reporting at the time.

Other than voting to send the regional agreement off to DESE for review, the other major business the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board undertook recently was naming the new district. The name, at least for now, is the Great River Regional School District after a vote by board members on April 29.

Genovese said the board would be letting the proposed name “marinate for a bit,” as several members noted that “Great River” was what English colonists called the Connecticut River and that could be disrespectful to Indigenous people. Board members said they could take another look at the name, but did note they would likely agree with keeping it. A translation of Kwenitekw, an Indigenous name for the Connecticut River, is “Long River.”

“I wouldn’t want that to get off the rails of what the real mission is,” said Gill representative Deb Loomer, referencing the drawn-out controversy of naming the mascot at Turners Falls High School. “I don’t think [people are] going to care about the name of the school district; they’re going to care about the name of the high school.”

“I don’t have any kind of issues and I feel like I’m a pretty ‘woke’ person,” added Northfield representative Deb Potee. “I just think it’s an inspiring word, as opposed to Long River.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.