Bill Dwight: Facts about school budget matter

Glenn Carstens-Peters/StockSnap

Published: 02-20-2025 4:39 PM

Letter to the Editors

Deb Henson’s Feb. 15 column [“Northampton mayor, council fail to heed our priority — Schools,” Feb. 14) made two significant assertions that are not supported by the facts.

Henson wrote that “the current budget ... funnels millions of dollars to the reserve (aka stabilization) fund, thereby creating one of the largest of such funds in the state (ninth highest out of 351 in 2023), while slashing the school budget.”

1. “Slashing” implies a reduced amount of money for Northampton Public Schools. But that is not at all what happened. As Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra had previously written [column, “Northampton’s capital spending makes fiscal sense,” Jan. 15]: “The annual increase in the city’s direct contribution to NPS was 5.07% in FY23, 7.41% in FY24 and 8.99% in FY25. This is the only period in the last 30 years with three consecutive years of increases above 5%. For FY25, it is estimated that total spending for NPS will be 138% of the state-determined minimum for our district, which would be the second highest amount since FY1993, when we spent only 92% of the minimum.”

Debate over whether more money might have been distributed is possible, but to characterize spending increases as “slashing” is incorrect.

2. The mayor’s column directly addressed the claim of Northampton’s high statewide ranking in stabilization fund amounts. The ranking is based on a table produced by the state that does not make it clear that nearly half of the city’s stabilization fund total comes from money in our water, sewer, stormwater, and solid waste enterprise stabilization funds.

The enterprise system is a closed one funded by our utility fees; that money is unavailable for use by schools. Moreover, many other Massachusetts municipalities don’t have enterprise stabilization funds. Any ranking based on that table does not compare cities fairly. I am concerned, as well, that the Support Our Schools Political Action Committee is using these discredited facts to distort the picture of the city’s fiscal management, in effect accusing the city of over-saving.

We are already suffering a national dialogue plagued by misinformation. In Northampton we can hold ourselves to a higher standard, employing the same set of facts in which to root our differences of opinion.

Bill Dwight

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