Union members and advocates gathered outside of City Hall before the June 20 City Council meeting to protest their disdain for Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra’s school budget proposal.
Reminder Publishing photo by Ryan Feyre
NORTHAMPTON — The Northampton City Council failed to pass Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra’s $137 million fiscal year 2025 budget, which included $40.8 million for schools, during its June 20 regular meeting.
The council was unable to obtain the six votes required to pass the budget. Three councilors — Ward 4 Councilor Jeremy Dubs, Ward 3 Councilor Quaverly Rothenberg and Ward 7 Councilor Rachel Maiore — voted against the budget because it still results in the layoffs of around 20 educators in the public schools.
“Tonight, I am voting for our children, their educations and their futures,” Dubs said during the meeting. “I am voting to not cut funding or services from schools. It’s simple as that.”
At-large members Garrick Perry and Marissa Elkins, along with Ward 1 Councilor Stan Moulton, Ward 2 Councilor Deborah Klemer and Ward 6 Councilor Marianne LaBarge, were the five councilors to vote in favor of the budget.
Council President Alex Jarrett had to recuse himself from the vote because of a conflict of interest; he runs the Pedal People cooperative, which has a conflict with the Central Services department in Northampton. Based on his comments during the meeting, he likely would have been the sixth “yes” vote.
Background and what happens next
In the past, Sciarra has said that two “fiscal cliffs” have caused recent struggles with the school budget. One is the end of the one-time, coronavirus pandemic-related Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, ESSER funds, which provided $7 million in relief to the district over the past few years. The second, meanwhile, is the district spending money from the School Choice account faster than it replenishes it.
In this year’s budget message, Sciarra once again noted the significant impact a lack of state funding plays in the school district’s budget issues.
“Northampton’s Chapter 70 funding aid from the state has grown very little over the last 20 years,” Sciarra’s budget read. “Meanwhile, required Net School Spending, which is the metric determined by [the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] for the annual minimum including Chapter 70 that a district must spend on schools, has increased.”
She mentioned that stagnant aid from the states as well as an overreliance of one-time funds contributed to a $4.77 million deficit in the school budget for FY25.
Sciarra originally submitted a budget of $39.6 million for the schools in mid-May, or a 5% increase from the current fiscal year.
That initial proposal included the appropriation of $1.24 million from the Fiscal Stability Stabilization Fund.
Sciarra, however, then presented an amended FY25 budget in early June with a proposed $40.8 million for schools, or an 8% increase from the current fiscal year. The amended budget included a transfer of $1.98 million from stabilization funds to the schools.
Because the council failed to pass the full budget with the $40.8 million for schools, Sciarra’s initial proposal from May 16, which includes the $39.6 million for NPS, will have to pass on July 1, when FY25 begins, unless the council passes a different budget before then.
That, however, is unlikely to happen, according to a couple of councilors.
Sciarra indicated during the June 20 meeting that her office will not increase the school budget any more than the $40.8 million presented. Because of this, Jarrett expressed a desire to not meet again as a council before the start of the fiscal year.
“I’m personally not willing to attend a meeting to discuss this before July 1 given that the mayor’s not going to introduce anything more,” said Jarrett, who said he was willing to vote for the budget despite not liking it.
Elkins, meanwhile, indicated during the meeting that there is little desire from the council to meet again before July 1 to debate the budget.
“I would suggest the tolerance of the council is not high,” Elkins said.
Despite an apparent lack of appetite for another meeting before July 1, the council can still approve amendments to the budget to get to that 8% increase for schools during a special meeting within the next couple of weeks. Sciarra said during the June 20 meeting that she still plans on putting the amendments forward to get to that 8% increase for schools.
“The amended budget is the budget that I put forward,” Sciarra said. “If it doesn’t get voted, then I’m certainly not going to not appropriate that money to the schools. It would have to come in July.”
Either way, a 5% or an 8% increase to schools would still land short of the $42.8 million school budget the School Committee passed in April, which would avoid all layoffs to the school district.
City Hall gathering, special meeting
For the last several months, students, staff, unions, community advocates and representatives from the Northampton Association of School Employees have utilized protests, public comment periods, community forums and walkouts to fight for a level services budget to schools.
Ahead of the council meeting on June 20, NASE, the Hampshire Franklin Labor Assembly, students, health care workers, the Western Mass. Area Labor Federation — which represents 50,000 union workers in the region — and other advocates met at the steps of City Hall to galvanize the community to continue the fight for the $42.8 million school budget that would avoid layoffs.
“We are here in this ungodly heat because we care about our children’s education and we’re angry that the city has so far brought the budget to fund our public schools that is just unserious and unconscionable,” said Nykole Roche, a parent of three Northampton Public School children and a researcher with the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
During the gathering, Jeff Jones, the president of WMALF, announced that they were rescinding its endorsement of Sciarra. He said that WMALF attempted to meet with Sciarra on four occasions to discuss ways to fully fund the schools but did not receive a response.
“We’ve been trying to have a discussion with the mayor forever, and we sent an email with a letter attached to it; no response,” Jones said. “We followed up with an email. No response. We followed up with a phone call and actually got a live person in the mayor’s office that said her schedule was frozen because she’s so busy.”
Andrea Egitto, the president of NASE, lamented the growing probability that some of the most important student-facing positions in the district could be eliminated because of this budget.
“These are positions of people that are helping our most struggling, most vulnerable students,” Egitto said. “These are people that work with our kids every single day, and they are being cut as if they are dispensable.”
Earlier in the week, NASE voted no confidence in current Superintendent Portia Bonner. The union cited many different reasons for doing this including how she has approached the current budget process.
For the last several weeks, advocates have contended against the idea that there is a deficit in the NPS budget and have argued that the city does indeed have money to fully fund schools.
Al Simon, a former city councilor and deputy mayor from Windsor, Connecticut, suggested during the standout that the city has had a budget surplus of at least $4 million over the last eight years with the exception of 2020, according to figures he presented from the Department of Revenue’s independent audits.
A few days before the budget vote, Simon was joined by Rothenberg, retired Smith College economics professor Tom Riddell, NASE member Kate Fontaine and Bridge Street School first grade teacher Joanne Morgan to give a 30-minute presentation about possible alternative plans for next year’s budget during a special council meeting.
“You cannot obviously have a deficit and a surplus at the same time,” Simon said during the special council meeting, referring to the budget surplus statistics he presented. “And this surplus is certified by the state of Massachusetts and our independent auditors. And I have every reason to believe that is correct.”
During her portion of the presentation, Rothenberg presented potential future solutions to the city’s budget problem to help ensure the school budget is fully funded, like creating a budget and fiscal oversight committee to help determine target amounts for the city’s free cash use based on target savings amounts.
She also presented the idea of annual operational audits of selected major departments before union contracts are negotiated and having town halls early in the budget season to involve the community more.
During that meeting, Rothenberg said that schools, on average, have a 4% annual operating cost increase, but she argued that the city’s recent budget formula has shortchanged schools. Therefore, a larger increase this year is necessary.
“What the 14% represents is how much of a greater space and share of the budget this mayor needs to give to the schools to actually fully include them permanently in our budget because [the schools] have been paid with bits and pieces and odds and ends and almost treated like an ugly stepchild of our budget,” Rothenberg said.
Simon claimed that the city was sitting on a “mountain of cash” that was unlike anything he has seen before and used statistics from the Division of Local Services’ Data Analytics and Resources Bureau to show that Northampton had one of the highest stabilization fund balances in the state.
Sciarra responded in that meeting saying that the city needed to solve the deficit they are dealing with this year.
“We’re not simply, what we’re facing is not simply a $4.77 million in FY25 just for one year,” Sciarra said. “We have a structural deficit that’s been growing rapidly for the last three years and will continue to grow if we don’t address the disparity between the fast rise and the recurring expenses in the Northampton Public Schools and the city streams of recurring revenues.”
City Finance Director Charlene Nardi, meanwhile, stated that the auditors report presented by Simon is not a good indication of what the city has available for operating costs. She also added that money from the city’s stabilization funds is “not readily available” because the money is already tied to other projects in the city.
More public comment
The discontent of the mayor’s current budget proposal leaked into the public comment period during the June 20 council meeting immediately following the protest at City Hall. Speakers once again used the full 90 minutes of allotted public comment time.
Ward 4 School Committee member Michael Stein argued during his portion of public comment that the city’s fiscal stability plan has been “wildly successful” in generating cash for savings, capital and special projects at the expense of adequately funding education.
Jennifer James, a parent of a student who is currently part of the district and another one who went through the district, expressed disdain for the current FY25 budget.
“I hope you can look me in the eye and my son in the eye if you vote against level funding,” James said. “I hope you can look at all the students you see on the street in the eye and know what you’ve done if you vote against level funding our schools.”
Zara Usman, a rising junior at NHS and member of the student union, told the council that a lack of level services would increase class sizes and eliminate important electives.
“Losing electives and larger class sizes are just some of the realities that our schools will be faced with without level services, which all lead to families choosing their students out of district and into charter schools,” Usman said.
Other city councilor thoughts
In her remarks to the council on June 20, Maiore said that she felt the council missed out on “new ideas” and “out-of-the-box” thinking in what was a laborious several months of budget discussions.
“I really wish I could grab anything I can for the schools,” said Maiore, who voted no on the budget. “I think that every position matters, and even one or two positions make a huge difference in the environment in the school and in the experience of the students.”
Moulton, who voted for the budget, described this year’s budget season as “one of the most contentious” and one that has “ripped the fabric” to some extent.
“It’s distressing to vote for a budget that results in people losing their jobs,” Moulton said. “That’s a terrible thing.”
Elkins expressed support for the budget and commended the mayor for putting forth what she believes is a fiscally responsible budget.
“And I mean responsible in all senses of the word,” Elkins said. “In terms of … funding our priorities as much as we can.”
Rothenberg, who joined Dubs and Maiore in voting against this budget, stated that it is not for the council to decide whether certain positions are not needed in the school district because every student has their own needs.
“[Northampton schools] don’t look like the schools we went to 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago,” Rothenberg said. “They provide different services and essential services and the kinds of services that change the world. And that’s why it’s an essential value to our community.”
As of press time, it is unclear what specific positions will be cut to the school district. Reminder Publishing will have more once things evolve.
Other orders
The council also approved the appropriation of $800,000 from the FY24 Undesignated Fund to seed the recently implemented Northampton Public School Special Education Fund. The fund will be sustained with future annual recurring medical reimbursement funds to help cover unforeseen special education expenses.
The council also approved the use of $500,000 as a gift from Smith College to help the public schools over the next three fiscal years. According to the order, $166,666 will be used in each year from FY25 through FY27 to help the school budget.
A vote to approve Sciarra’s recommendation to have an override question on the 2024 state election ballot in November was also passed by council with Rothenberg voting no.
According to the order, if voters pass the override, then the city would allowed to “assess an additional $3,000,000 in real estate and personal property taxes for the purposes of funding the operating budgets of the city and public schools for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2025.”
In her May 16 budget message, Sciarra said that if the override did not pass then the city would need to make additional cuts next fiscal year.
