NORTHAMPTON — Half is better than none.
That sums up how many parents, teachers and advocates pushing the City Council to approve a $600,000 midyear appropriation from the city’s Fiscal Stability Stabilization Fund to the school budget were feeling after more than three hours of discussion at Thursday’s council meeting.
After first balking at authorizing that amount without details about which of the 20 jobs cut last summer would be reinstated, the council ended up approving nearly $295,000 after Superintendent Portia Bonner said that amount would enable the schools to hire math and reading tutors, as well as paraprofessional staff to work as hall and playground monitors for the last 11 weeks of the school year.
The roughly two dozen people in the audience lobbying councilors to boost the school budget were pleased that the school will get more for the rest of this school year.
“What’s happened is more time has gone on, more harm has happened, and now they’ve finally been convinced to do something,” said Al Simon after the council vote. “And we’re very pleased because there is a crying need in the school. It’s not everything we need, but it’s something.”
He continued, “And I guarantee you this: We’ll be back to advocate for next year’s budget for proper funding.”
The council also unanimously requested that the mayor include $50,000 of the approved $295,000 amount as a recurring expense as she builds the city budget for fiscal year 2026.
Thursday’s decision ends a saga that began last month when the School Committee, through Bonner, requested the city appropriate the $600,000. Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, a member of the committee, introduced the order to the council, albeit without her recommendation.
Public comment featured parents, teachers, and even a second grade student who all assailed city officials, most of whom said the lack of funding in schools is going to potentially stunt the development of students in the city.
During extensive discussion on the financial order, Ward 7 Councilor Rachel Maiore said the original request didn’t suit the “appetite” of the majority of the council, evidenced by more than three hours of contentious debate, the likes of which Ward 6’s Marianne LaBarge said she hadn’t seen in her more than 20 years on the council.
It was Maiore who motioned for the reduced number after Bonner spelled out the schools’ most immediate needs.
“This is an opportunity for us to be able to kind of have some normalcy at our schools, and to assist with, I don’t want to say crowd control, but it is crowd control, and it would really significantly help us,” Bonner said.
If the schools are unable to find or hire staff for the rest of the school year, the extra money would be returned to the city and be available as free cash. And because the $50,000 recommended to the council for the fiscal year 2026 budget would be spent for the last quarter of this school year, over a full year that recurring expense is estimated at $200,000.
During discussion, Finance Director Charlene Nardi told the council that should they OK the $600,000 and make that amount a recurring budget item, the city would “certainly” face overrides, at the rate of $3 million every three years. This news concerned Ward 2’s Deborah Klemer.
“I think about how we’re going to pay for these things. … Has anybody looked at other things to do besides giving money to the schools? Like other ways to teach, other systems to use? I’m not a teacher but there are a lot of smart people here and we should be talking about that instead of just asking for money,” Klemer said.
When it became clear that the larger request wouldn’t garner enough votes to pass, but that the smaller appropriation looked likely, the council moved ahead with a vote that passed unanimously. However, two councilors — Ward 3’s Quaverly Rothenberg and Ward 4’s Jeremy Dubs — noted for the record that they would have supported the full amount.
Before the council began debates, they listened to an hourlong period of public comment. Students, teachers, and residents brought to light incidents of neglecting special needs students to what they claimed broke federal law, and about how a lack of personnel after last summer’s cuts has led to what they described as chaos.
Second grader Andrew Goodman talked about his “very loud” classroom of 26. “Please give smaller classes,” he asked city officials. His dad, Ian, was on the verge of tears when he asked that the city stop neglecting students.
Gaurav Jashnani, an academic researcher and father of a special needs student, lent his expertise.
“What I see in our schools right now is clearly, absolutely institutional racism,” he said. “What do you think happens to children when we take away their opportunities for a decent education? You may all feel good about the reparations committee talking about the past — it doesn’t make up for perpetrating racist harm in the present.”
He added: “What so-called progressive would vote against providing money for kids?”
