For close to 40 years, I have spent almost my entire adult life working with teenagers. My work for the past 20 years has been in public, private and residential schools focusing on students’ mental health as a clinical social worker. As a resident of Northfield, I have worked to support our local public school district and have had a daughter, two nieces and a nephew graduate from Pioneer. For years, I have fundraised, written letters, protested, spoken at town and school committee meetings and engaged with administration and teachers, all in support of the success of this district.

Six years ago, after a town vote in May 2019, I was appointed to the Six Town Regionalization Planning Board as one of three representatives from Northfield. The towns include Warwick, Leyden, Northfield, Bernardston, Gill and Montague and each had three representatives, including several school committee members. The goal was to determine if combining two separate districts, Pioneer Valley Regional with Gill-Montague to create a new district, would be beneficial for students, staff and the taxpaying citizens of the six towns.

Primary driving forces to do this have been to address ever declining enrollment, financial shortfalls, instability in academics/student extracurricular activities and underutilized facilities. We began meeting in November of that year and have continued to meet at least once monthly since. Our work has involved researching, looking at data, reaching out to town officials, sharing out to school committees, writing articles, developing websites, hiring and working with contracted experts who were able to review and compile data, sending out surveys, giving presentations, etc. It has been a tremendous amount of work, time, energy and commitment by everyone on the board but especially our leaders, Alan Genovese and Greg Snedeker.

After four and half years, slowed down by the pandemic but still with almost the entire original board, we voted that regionalizing the two districts would be more beneficial to all than the status quo. This brought the work forward to the next level which involved creating the district agreement to be sent to DESE for review. The citizens will determine whether all six towns will support regionalization of these two districts in a vote that will take place this fall.

Merging the two districts would have many benefits due to increased population and stability to create dynamic classroom environments, strengthen and broaden academic coursework, enlarge teacher numbers/expertise, increase extracurricular opportunities and deepen and expand the pool of students who might want to play a sport, be in the arts or participate in an extracurricular club or activity. A new district should also save the six towns some money by having one central office and administration. Additionally, the state is supportive of regionalizing.

I am most interested in how combining districts would benefit students psychologically. Adolescents, to thrive psychologically, as they move away from primary caregiver attachment (parent/guardian) and move towards peer attachment, need to make friends. Teenagers crave community with each other over their families at this stage and this is developmentally appropriate. The social skills required to make and keep friends start at an early age for many but the majority of adolescents are still figuring out interpersonal effectiveness like empathy, boundary setting, values and asking for what they need as middle and high schoolers.

Adolescents are also working on their identity, often mimicking their peers, what they see in the media and exploring who they are in a variety of ways. Who adolescents become as young adults can frequently be seen in who they spent time with or if they spent time with other adolescents. Developing social connections as a teenager is key to long-term mental and physical health as ego development is interconnected with identity. Teens look to each other to find commonalities, support, connection, reflection, stability and community.

Finally, most studies point to social connection as integral to a happy life. As of the 2024-25 school year, Pioneer has 111 students in grades 9-12 with the incoming seniors this fall at 16 students and Turners Falls clocks in at 197. Essentially, I believe middle and high schools that are as small as both Turners and Pioneer can struggle to provide a thriving or stable social environment for a wide range of adolescents. I care deeply about young people and truly believe that this merger is in the best interest of the six towns’ citizens, the communities at large and most importantly, the students who will be spending these psychologically critical years in our schools learning to become healthy, contributing and thriving adults.

Deborah Potee is a licensed independent clinical social worker who lives in Northfield.