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Date: 4/17/2023
NORTHAMPTON — The Northampton School Committee officially approved a fiscal year 2024 budget of a little over $37.7 million during their April 13 meeting.
The $37.7 million that was accepted constitutes the city and state contribution to the budget after the district spent the past few weeks looking to close a deficit that was once $2.3 million and is now only a little over $649,300.
Background
When the 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, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciara 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 school budget must be balanced using stable, recurring revenues to pay for recurring expenses,” Sciarra said.
Sciarra, the Northampton Association of School Employees, the district’s administrative leadership team, and the School Committee are planning to work together with state Sen. Jo Comerford (D-Northampton) and state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa (D-Northampton) to increase Chapter 70 state funding for NPS to also help solve these deficit issues.
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 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.
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 Gwen Agna, the vice chair of the School Committee. “It takes a village and ours is a strong and determined one.”
April 13 meeting
After a lengthy discussion, the School Committee decided by a 7-3 vote to accept the proposed $37.7 million budget with the $649,300 deficit on April 13. The goal now is for Roberta Jones, the district’s business administrator, to go back and apply the proposed reductions.
“I’m just glad that this School Committee and this alt team and just everybody working together in the district…was thinking about not just how to balance the budget, but about how to get students what they need,” said Ward 3 committee member Emily Serafy-Cox. “I really see that in this process.”
Despite the majority vote, there was a push from a few committee members to decrease the cost-of-living adjustment for non-represented employees.
Jones presented a decrease in raises for non-represented employees in the district from 5% to 4%, but a couple of committee members felt this was not a sufficient enough decrease.
Committee member Michael Stein, who was one of three who voted against the budget, suggested that the number be reduced to a 3% cost-of living adjustment. The extra decrease would have saved the district an extra $10,000, and the hope from Stein was to use some of those savings toward other components of the district that are more in line with the committee’s wishes.
“From the perspective of, where is our money lining up for what we say we want to accomplish, I don’t think that’s been made clear,” Stein said.
Committee member Dina Levi said she was also disappointed that the COLA for non-represented employees was not reduced to 3%.
“I appreciate that [the non-rep. raises] came back lower [but] I’m a little disappointed that it only came back only one percentage point lower,” said Levi. “I know that teachers have a 3% COLA, and some teachers have a step on top of that, but I also want to note that the majority of teacher salaries are far lower than administrative salaries.”
The motion was ultimately shot down by a vote of 7-3, which meant the COLA would remain at 4%.
The committee had until April 14 to submit a budget to the mayor for inclusion in the citywide budget, which will be presented on May 17. FY24 begins on July 1.