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Date: 5/9/2023
NORTHAMPTON — Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra is calling on the public to join her in advocating for more statewide school funding for Northampton and other minimum aid communities.
In an announcement on the city website and during the City Council meeting on May 4, Sciarra said that preliminary proposals for new state tax revenue have shown little focus on K-12 education funding.
“Our community work needs to start now,” she said in the announcement. “Our immediate goal is to have a positive impact on the choices for the state budget this year, including the plans for the Fair Share Amendment.”
Massachusetts voters opted to levy an additional income tax on Massachusetts’ highest earners back in November. Known as the Fair Share Amendment, the successful vote amended the state constitution to levy an additional 4% surtax on income over $1 million, to be put toward education and transportation. Eighty-two percent of Northampton voters supported this levy.
Despite this victory, some districts, like Northampton, are not receiving sufficient funds from the state while requirements for school spending continue to increase.
“We have an overall decrease in state aid of $84,422,” said Sciarra, during a School Committee budget meeting back in March for fiscal year 2024. “Required net school spending increased significantly, but Chapter 70 [aid from the state] only increased by a small amount.”
According to the data, required school spending increased by 4.4% this year, while Chapter 70 aid only increased by 1%. Over the past 16 years, the city’s Foundation Budget has increased by almost $12 million while Chapter 70 state aid has increased by only $810,033.
Roberta Jones, the business manager for Northampton Public Schools, said the recent lack of Chapter 70 funding in Northampton is mainly due to a substantial drop in enrollment. Data presented during the March meeting showed that enrollment rates have remained stagnant, with total enrollment across the school systems down about 7% since 2014.
“We only get the minimum aid,” said Jones, who added that the only way Northampton can secure more funding is by either increased enrollment or if the state changes its funding formula.
Gwen Agna, a member of the School Committee, said in March that Northampton consistently ranked in the bottom out of all 136 cities in Massachusetts when it came to Chapter 70 funding aid from the state. Even with the passing of the Student Opportunity Act in 2019, which includes a seven-year plan to close inequitable gaps, Northampton is still seeing insufficient state aid.
“We are still unfortunately a minimum aid district,” Agna said. “We are stagnant and [have] decline enrollment at this point.”
Because of this lack of state aid, Northampton has had to rely on local funds to close gaps in its budget.
When the FY24 school budget was initially presented in early March, there was a deficit of about $1.2 million. That number ballooned to $2.3 million when the budget was presented again due to a $1.1 million deficit in the school choice account.
The school choice deficit amount is accredited to the district spending from that account exceeding the revenue it receives from municipalities that send students to Northampton.
To offset a large portion of this deficit, Sciarra committed $1.2 million from the city’s stabilization fund to cover more than half of the $2.3 million shortfall as part of a two-year plan to balance the school budget and return to “strong” fiscal principles.
The district then used pandemic relief money and other funds to reduce the gap to $649,300.
In a release sent to Reminder Publishing, the proposed FY24 budget will still require some budget cuts to address the deficit, but none of these cuts will lead to a significant loss of staff or programming.
The mayor’s office stated that the $2.3 million deficit was created by relying on temporary emergency relief and money from the district’s School Choice fund, which comes from students who live outside Northampton and choose Northampton schools.
The remaining $649,300 deficit will be closed through attrition, which includes not filling currently open positions or not replacing retired staff.
For example, the budget now proposes that a retiring kindergarten teacher at Jackson Street Elementary School will not be replaced, which means there will be two kindergarten classrooms at Jackson rather than three.
“The school budget must be balanced using stable, recurring revenues to pay for recurring expenses,” Sciarra said.
The district eventually passed a budget of $37 million, which includes state and citywide contributions to the district.
To ensure a balanced budget for FY25, Sciarra said she will ask the district’s administration to produce a plan with additional spending reductions by this December, which is earlier than usual during budget season.
This new plan will be produced under a new administration, which includes recently hired Superintendent Portia Bonner.
“We are grateful for the mayor’s efforts to form a coalition of stakeholders and representatives to plug a significant portion of the deficit and to build a stabilization plan for the future,” said Agna. “It takes a village and ours is a strong and determined one.”
Now, with the FY24 school budget passed, the mayor is making a push for more statewide spending.
“Many of us were particularly focused on the hope of a desperately needed new source of state aid revenue for our schools,” she said. “Please join me, the Northampton Association of School Employees, state Sen. Jo Comerford and state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa and others in our school, city and broader Northampton community in asking to increase state funding for our public schools.”
The proposal asks that critical increases be added in the final state budget including $100 per pupil for minimum aid communities like Northampton, full funding of the Special Education Circuit Breaker and Charter School Tuition Reimbursement formula, and an allocation of $166 million in funds from the Fair Share Amendment for K-12 students, among other things.
“We will be asking you to join us in advocating for long-term goals as well, but right now we need your help advocating for the fiscal year 2024 state budget,” Sciarra said.
Sciarra is asking residents to join her in signing a letter to state legislators to advocate for fair state funding. Readers may find it on the city website: https://www.northamptonma.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1391.