On June 22, 2026, I met with Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, Chief of Staff Alan Wolf and Finance Director Charlene Nardi to discuss Northampton’s school budget. Each made specific claims about how the city has funded and supported its schools.
Those claims include that the city has raised the budget for schools by 40% over the past five years and that the schools have had level services over that same timeframe, similar to other city departments. They also asked for data on how the city is not meeting the needs of school children.
In terms of the school budget increasing, the city has stated this figure three ways in the same budget cycle: the mayor’s budget message measures it from fiscal year 2022; the budget’s own “Budget At A Glance” summary measures it from fiscal 2023; her office’s written reply to me measures it from fiscal 2022, plus a private Smith College gift and a special-education reserve withdrawal, added to the fiscal 2027 total.
None of these produce 40% consistently against the district’s own numbers. In the period between fiscal 2022 and 2027, the city appropriation alone is an increase of 39.3%, not 40%. Adding money outside the annual school appropriation brings the total increase to 40.5%.
The same calculations for the period between fiscal 2023 and 2027 is worse: 32.5% on the city appropriation alone, and 33.7% with the same additions.
Even 39.3% is generous. In fiscal year 2022, the last budget submitted by outgoing mayor David Narkowicz, Northampton Public Schools drew $963,000 more from its School Choice reserve than that year’s tuition covered, spending savings to help pay operating costs. That reduced what the city needed to appropriate. When that amount is added back into the budget, the real budget increase since 2022 is 35.4%.
The statement that the schools have had level services over the past five years, like other city departments, is also in question. In fact, the staffing record contradicts this directly. It shows that NPS shed approximately 12 net positions between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2026 — about 11 of them teachers.
At the same time, the district added four paraeducator positions, but these new hires do not restore general education capacity. Paraeducators fulfilling individual education plans (IEPs) are legally assigned to specific students under federal mandate and cannot be redirected to support general education classrooms or cover lost instructional staff. Their addition meets a compliance obligation, not a service-level one. The district ended this period with fewer teachers than it started with, and its paraeducator additions were legally encumbered before they arrived. That is not level services.
As for the request to show data on how the city is not meeting the needs of children in our schools, I’ll take that request seriously because there is no shortage of answers in the public record.
If the hours of parent testimony at School Committee and City Council public comment were not sufficient — testimony from families describing what services their children were and were not receiving — then consider what the district’s own principals have put in writing. Year after year, in the superintendent’s budget presentations, building leaders requested restoration of basic positions: reading and math interventionists, classroom teachers, librarians and clerical staff.
These are not wish lists. They are documented gaps, authored by the people closest to the students, submitted through official channels, and largely unfunded. That is data.
If that too is insufficient, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has provided the answer. In August 2025, DESE issued a letter of finding after investigating complaints at Bridge Street Elementary and JFK Middle School.
At Bridge Street, investigators found NPS had difficulty hiring paraeducators at the start of the 2024–25 school year, so students missed services mandated by their IEPs — a pattern DESE called “neither infrequent nor isolated.” At JFK Middle School, special education teachers were pulled from IEP-service duties to substitute teach general education classes, again causing students to miss required services.
A letter of finding is not a routine audit or a parent complaint. It is a state enforcement action, issued only when DESE concludes a district violated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Corrective action was ordered. Former Superintendent Portia Bonner wrote in her March 2025 newsletter that “the consensus among staff, parents, and community members is clear” that the WINS inclusion model had produced “long-term, unintended negative effects on the quality of special education programming across Northampton Public Schools.”
These are not allegations. They are findings by the state agency responsible for enforcing federal disability law, corroborated by the district’s own leadership. That is the record.
Every figure and finding here traces to a public record, not to me. I put each of them to Sciarra, Wolf and Nardi weeks ago. Since then, the Mayor’s Office has replied — but only to defend its calculation, without addressing the baseline problems laid out above. Wolf and Nardi have not responded.
Ian Goodman lives in Northampton.