AMHERST — The idea of moving seventh and eighth graders to Amherst Regional High School, potentially turning the Amherst Regional Middle School building into an innovation center, is being greeted with cautious optimism by members of the Regional School Committee.

The merger of the regional schools, potentially as soon as next fall, could address concerns about potentially significant reductions in staffing at the regional schools if the four member towns don’t support a level-services budget.

At Tuesday’s Regional School Committee meeting, Amherst representative Irv Rhodes said the consolidation plan is an incredibly timely proposal from Superintendent E. Xiomara Herman, presented at a late September four-towns meeting.

“It gave us a path forward that we had not considered before,” Rhodes said.

The idea of using the extra building as an innovation school focused on technology and other new programs is “brilliant and exciting,” said Amherst representative Deb Lenard.

Tilman Wolf, who represents Leverett, commended the superintendent for out-of-the-box thinking. “It was great to see that you had proposed a solution that doesn’t just cut 30 positions and say that’s it,” Wolf said.

But even with the praise, Herman said any effort at putting all grade 7-12 students from Shutesbury, Pelham, Leverett and Amherst into one school needs a deeper dive into the logistics and timelines.

“The one thing I don’t want is for January to hit and parents don’t know where their children are going to be, and what’s going to happen for the upcoming school year,” Herman said.

While the consolidation idea would take pressure off annual budgets, long term there are also operational costs to consider, as both the high school and middle school require extensive maintenance, with the middle school also needing a new roof and other repairs. Though there has been deferred maintenance at the middle school, shuttering the building also has costs, Herman said. Her preference is to shift it to an innovation school, but also to have the building ready to become a middle school again.

The regional agreement between the four member towns will also need to be part of the conversation, especially if the middle school is used to bring in revenue.

“It’s not going to be large, but it will still be enough to support the maintenance,” Herman said.

Herman is already speaking with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Office of Charter Schools and School Redesign. “Taking time to plan that out and map that out makes critical sense,” Herman said.

Under one scenario, the regional school would have a principal and three assistant principals. That model, curriculum changes, projected enrollment and space needs will be examined over the next six weeks.

“That conversation may happen with the design team, but I don’t think that’s the focus of the design team,” Herman said. Instead, that state office’s role is to take existing educational models and make them better.

Herman explained that there are several prongs to her and her team’s study of the “Future of the Region” for the 2025-2026 school year, with an aim to “position the region as a forward-thinking hub of education, innovation, and community resilience, ensuring our students are well-prepared for the future while effectively buffering against the impacts of budget cuts.”

“I need everyone to understand this is fluid at this point,” Herman said.

The first prong is maximizing resources, noting the true picture of spending is just starting to unravel, and identifying gaps and whether costs savings can be achieved. “Level services is not going to work,” Herman said.

A second prong is student and family retention, providing supports, such as for more families at the Amherst Family Center.

A third is program innovation. Herman said there is a need to address losing 94 students and $2.3 million in state aid to charter schools.

Finally, a fourth consideration is community partnerships and how to partner with the University of Massachusetts and the other Five Colleges members.

“It’s time to shift what that partnership looks like and start that discussion,” Herman said, adding that she wants the schools to be a mecca and model for education. “Everything doesn’t have to be a partnership based on money.”

Amherst representative Bridget Hynes said she appreciates that Herman is focused on the budget challenges, though even in the best case 25 positions would be lost, although that’s better than the 40 needed to be cut otherwise. “That’s a tremendous amount of cuts,” Hynes said.

School committee members are ready to support the initiative overall, said Amherst representative Jennifer Shiao, though getting so much done by next fall will be challenging.

“I feel like it’s a really big lift to accomplish this, whatever the plan ends up looking like, for the next year,” Shiao said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.