News of the layoffs broke in the middle of the school day Tuesday. It didn’t take students long to catch on that something notable was going on.
“They emailed the teachers during lunch, and a teacher stepped out in my next period, and I didn't understand why. I was very confused," Mount Everett Regional High School freshman Olivia Fusco told WAMC. “Apparently, a third-grade teacher got a call during her class, and she had to step out and go to the janitor's closet to cry, and then she came back to her classroom and had to explain to third graders why she wasn't going to be there next year.”
The layoff emails from Southern Berkshire Regional Superintendent Brian Ricca – first reported by the Berkshire Edge – cite a “well over $1 million” shortage in next year’s budget, which remains unpassed by the School District Committee with the July 1 start of the 2027 fiscal year looming.
The district serves around 600 students from the rural Berkshire communities of Alford, Egremont, New Marlborough, Monterey, and Sheffield. Fusco is struggling to imagine her future at Mount Everett with even less teachers and programming, to say nothing of the wider community.
“Without our chorus teacher, we're going to struggle to have a choir program, and we might even struggle to have a theater program, and I don't know what that's going to mean for our Fall Fest program," she said. "And we don't have a librarian now, so we don't know how our library is going to work. The poor elementary students don't have a gym teacher. How are they going to have a physical education program? We’re losing two English teachers.”
Mount Everett sophomore Lezly Solis Lopez says the move leaves students feeling unheard, forgotten, and demanding answers.
“The atmosphere is overall really sad and shocked and upset and frustrated," she told WAMC. "We understand that budget cuts are going to happen regardless, and we understand it's difficult to make those budget cuts happen in a way that won't affect everything and everyone, but at the same time, we don't believe that the decisions made were truly student centered.”
Like Fusco, Solis Lopez is also in the school chorus taught by Madeline Caruso - one of the staffers who learned she no longer had a job. The students say the news couldn’t have come at a worse time for the chorus.
“It was our concert day, and she told us before it because she was afraid that she wasn't going to see all of us together in the same room after the concert, so she told us before the concert, and it was a lot to take in," she said. "A lot of us were really distraught.”
While students say the concert was a powerful experience, Fusco agrees that it wasn’t an easy one.
“That was a really hard night, Tuesday night, because we were just- We had some students crying on stage, myself included," she said. "It was really hard to hear that someone so loved was not going to be there for us next year.”
Another chorus member and Mount Everett freshman, Owen Siket, said that Caruso’s commitment to her students has been a defining part of his Southern Berkshire Regional School District experience.
“I went out to the Western District Senior Choir in Massachusetts, and she gave up her own time and took us out there multiple days to be able to practice and rehearse and perform, and it's an all-day event, and she really dedicated herself to that,” he told WAMC.
Every student who spoke with WAMC believes the small high school in Sheffield has a lot to lose by cutting staff.
“I feel so incredibly safe at school, and I know that each of my teachers care very deeply about each of us, and it's very special environment, you know?" said Mount Everett junior Emeline Grace Krauss – another chorus member raising her voice in dissent.
She says the way the district has handled the situation has been a disaster.
“You're not born with apathy," Krauss told WAMC. "When you're just constantly taught that things don't matter because they're just being constantly taken from you without people asking you, just constantly taking and taking and taking, and eventually you’re left with nothing, that apathy is learned, and that is what teaches people that education doesn't matter.”
In a subsequent message to the community, Ricca acknowledged the backlash to the mid-day layoff emails but defended the approach as being “intended to provide timely and consistent communication while creating space for impacted employees to process privately and meet directly with district leadership.”
On Wednesday, the high schoolers are planning a walkout in solidarity with district teachers suddenly faced with unemployment. Siket told WAMC he believes the only way to pursue justice is by working together and becoming undeniable.
“In order to make change we need to act," he said. "It's good that people are upset and concerned by what's going on, and that is the first step, but we can't make change and progress and asking as to why all these cuts are happening and without administration, unless people act and ask the tough questions.”
