Al Simon: What does a community that prioritizes public education look like?

Northampton City Hall GAZETTE FILE PHOTO

Published: 06-05-2024 4:39 PM

Modified: 06-05-2024 8:52 PM

It has about 29,000 residents. It has four elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. It has about 3,300 students in public schools. The municipality has a total budget of about $139 million. Of that, $80 million is spent on public education. Now, this is not Northampton. It is Windsor, Connecticut, the town I moved from to Northampton.

There are significant differences between the communities, but many similarities. The total Northampton municipal budget is $132 million. Northampton’s public-school population is about 2,500 students. Northampton spends only $36.5 million on public education. Northampton has 75% of the student population of Windsor but spends only 45% of what Windsor spends.

A community that prioritizes public education does not promote a budget where the public schools are the only budget area forced to reduce services. A community that cares about public education does not prioritize putting more money into already robust savings accounts while it eliminates 30 jobs of already understaffed and underpaid public employees.

That is like deciding to pay only 90% of our mortgage bill because we want to put more cash in the bank.

Northampton politicians made choices years ago to fund investments in education by using one-time funds, repeatedly. Now, they do not want to do this anymore, even though they still can. These politicians have also decided the people who will pay for this change in budgeting strategy will be the newly unemployed teachers and support staff, and our public school students, who are 31% low income and 40% high needs. Class sizes will approach 30 at our high school.

In Windsor, class sizes are in the low 20s at all levels. I pay more than two times the taxes here in Northampton, while getting less than half the school spending of Windsor. Northampton schools are underfunded and understaffed, and if the mayor sticks to her plan, they will only be more so.

How can these be the values of “progressive Northampton,” where “equity” gets mentioned so often? Not only is public education not a priority in Northampton, but because it is the only budget item to face reductions, it is fair to say public education is the lowest priority. That is very sad. Is this what you want?

Al Simon

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