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Date: 12/18/2023
NORTHAMPTON — Superintendent Portia Bonner provided an early glimpse of the fiscal year 2025 school budget to the School Committee during its Dec. 14 regular meeting.
According to Bonner, who presented the budget for the first time as superintendent of Northampton schools after being hired earlier this summer, the school department is requesting close to $40.8 million for FY25, which would represent an increase of just under 8% from the current FY24 budget,
“While this appears to be a significant increase, the main driver is the salary increase comprised of both cost-of-living adjustment and step increases for our contracted employees, which comprises of about 83 to 84% of our operating budget,” said Bonner during her presentation.
An estimated budget deficit of $2.7 million looms in FY25 due to the district’s overreliance of school choice funds beyond sustainable levels, the elimination of coronavirus pandemic-related federal funding — also known as ESSER funds — and union contract increases that are exceeding the district’s revenue growth, and an increase of staff from FY18 to the current fiscal year due to coronavirus pandemic-related stressors and a change in the model to address special needs students.
The increase in staff since FY18 has added approximately $2.6 million to the annual budget, according to Bonner.
To close the $2.7 million gap, the FY25 budget features recommendations that include possible reduction in hours and/or elimination of staff.
“We are making a concerted effort to keep within the two-year plan to work to balance the school budget and return Northampton Public Schools to strong fiscal principals as promised to the city,” Bonner said in her presentation. “To meet this promise, we must consider reductions within the workforce and rebuild the school choice reserves.”
According to Bonner, a budget gap this size has been years in the making and was not unexpected.
School choice funds and wage increases
For the past four years, Northampton Public Schools has relied on an overuse of school choice funds to offset operating expenses.
District spending on these funds has exceeded the revenue it receives from municipalities that send students to Northampton. Because of this, overuse of these funds has resulted in a deficit and growing gap that has required NPS to need additional funds from the city to offset the operating budget.
In her FY23 budget message, Sciarra noted the future impact of over-relying on school choice funds and pandemic relief money for recurring and compounding expenses.
“In fiscal year 2023, the NPS budget relies on a significant portion of Reserve School of Choice funds. The use of these funds is exceeding the school of choice revenue, drawing down the fund balance at a rate that will result in a significant budget gap next year,” her budget message read that year. “The use of reserves greater than incoming revenue and one-time federal [ESSER] funds to such a degree will create a gap that will exceed the city’s capacity to raise additional revenue to cover it … I am concerned about our ability to maintain our educational programs and staffing at current levels in future years.”
Following that year, the FY24 budget experienced a $2.3 million deficit, which was eventually cut to $649,300 after Sciarra covered more than half the shortfall by using COVID-19 relief money and a one-time payment of $1.2 million from the city’s stabilization fund.
In an announcement back in the spring, Sciarra said the FY24 budget would still require some budget cuts to address the deficit, but none of the cuts would lead to significant loss of staff or programming.
Sciarra added at the time that the remaining deficit will be closed through attrition, which includes not filling currently open positions or not replacing retired staff.
School Committee and public reactions
School Committee member Emily Serafy-Cox expressed contempt about the posibility of cutting $2.7 million to fix the gap.
“I’m glad this is the beginning of the conversation and not the middle or the end, because this cannot stand,” Serafy-Cox said. “Our schools are not going to be in the same place if we move forward with these numbers, so we have to find a different solution than cutting $2.7 million.”
School Committee member Michael Stein, meanwhile, pushed back on the notion that the union contract increases, which were accrued when the Northampton Association of School Employees ratified a three-year contract in 2022, are a major reason for the budget deficit.
“The way it was presented made it seem like we were doing these wild increases across the board, and I think for most of us who have looked at this in depth, there was this decade-plus of no real increase and then recently some minor increases, but we’re still lower than most other places,” Stein said.
The Northampton Association of School Employees, otherwise known as NASE, ratified a three-year contract in June 2022 for FY23 to FY25 after union members argued that prior pay for educational support professionals left them almost impoverished. The contract featured pay increases for the school’s lowest paid workers, including paraprofessionals and cafeteria workers, who each received a $2 hour yearly raises for each year of their contract, as well as additional step increases they may qualify for.
The School Committee earmarked $250,000 in the FY23 budget for pay negotiations and unanimously voted for ratification.
Andrea Egitto, the president of NASE, spoke against the proposed recommendations to make staff reductions during the public comment portion of the meeting as a group of people standing behind her held signs that read “we are all essential” and “There is no fluff.”
“Every person in our district is essential,” Egitto said. “Our schools cannot possibly survive these cuts. I implore all of you to put forward a budget for what our schools need, not for what’s being handed down.”
Suzanne Strauss, an English teacher at the Northampton High school, echoed those sentiments and said the schools have the staff to “soar” but do not have the budget to do it. She argued that staff is more essential than ever as the high school alone has seen an increase from 700 students 30 years ago to 900-plus students now.
“We’re essential workers, why is it when there’s a problem, it ends up being direct services to children that get cut,” Strauss said. “We don’t need less, we need more.”
The School Committee plans to talk more about their budget as the coming months unfold. A joint meeting with the City Council is planned for January to go over the state of the city’s finances.