Looking to avoid a potential showdown and collect feedback from the public, the city council in Northampton, Massachusetts, punted a recent budget vote – squeezing in more time for debate.
Budget season in Northampton featured a bit of everything last year – a school committee demanding no cuts for Northampton Public Schools, rallies at city hall demanding the same and plenty of public comment.
That’s still happening this year, with advocates calling for more funding for the public school system, going above the $43.8 million Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra allotted in her proposed $145 million spending plan.
“Attrition, non-renewals, resignations, retirements that go unfilled mean less bodies in a building, less educators in classrooms, less services rendered and available for our students,” said local educator and teachers union member Paula Rigano during a May 21 city council meeting.
Instead of layoffs affecting as many as 20 jobs like last year, the mayor, school superintendent and NPS leadership put together a plan that opts for service cuts and not replacing outgoing staff – addressing rising costs and lagging state funding, all exacerbated by declining enrollment.
The plan features an almost 6 percent increase over last year’s budget, but as advocates have stressed, it falls short of the $46.6 million “strong budget” the school committee approved earlier this year.
Much of it echoes last year’s budget fight – a debate that led in-part to Superintendent Portia Bonner disputing claims of a funding crisis at a special city council meeting on May 27.
“Last year, we spent the whole year marketing our schools ... doing videos about our schools, but then it was totally destroyed when we got into budget season, because it felt that we are in crisis - this whole year, we've been in crisis - and that we are not offering these wonderful opportunities for our students, and yet we are," Bonner said, after listing off various programs and offerings NPS maintains following last year’s cuts. “There's that dark cloud that is shading the light from what actually is occurring in our schools, and those who are wise know that there's good things happening in our schools and families move here, particularly for our schools and for our programs.”
Speaking at Thursday’s city council meeting, Sciarra argues that, across the board, city departments would need to make eight percent cuts to get to the extra $2.7 million needed for the strong budget proposal, amounting to a loss of 51 positions in the city.
The mayor added that it was a only a few years ago, during the pandemic, in which many city departments faced cuts, but NPS staffing rose substantially.
“In total, there are about 20 city staff that were cut from ‘20 to ‘21. Just for context, in the same amount of time, Northampton Public School staffing increased by 40 FTEs,” the mayor said.
Advocates say that, given the student learning loss and other issues caused by the pandemic, various programming and previously cut staffers - like reading and math interventionists – are needed more than ever.
Supporters for a larger school budget, like the group “Support Our Schools,” have argued last year’s budget and the current proposal do not do enough to plug such learning gaps – and have called for restoring said staffers.
With debates still playing out heading into Thursday’s meeting, the city council reached a consensus, agreeing to delay a vote for two more weeks to allow more discussions and listening in place of a showdown that could have been drawn out.
Many are hoping to avoid last year’s process - one that ended with the council initially failing to pass an amended budget and Sciarra’s original spending plan going into effect.
Ward 3 City Councilor Quaverly Rothenberg, a proponent of larger school budgets, went as far as to commit to not lodging charter objections.
“I've tried them many times, since I've started, to see if it would give us more time to reassess our choices - it doesn't seem to have that effect,” Rothenberg said leading up to the postponement. “I would love to have a mutually-agreed upon continuance, and I would honor a commitment not to lodge a charter objection at any point in that process.”
The council will take up the budget decision again on June 18.
