NORTHAMPTON — As the deadline for Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra to a submit a budget proposal for the city draws near, an entrenched battle over the city’s public school budget is coming to a head.

The Northampton School Committee defied the mayor’s recommendation of a 4% increase in the budget in April, which would have resulted in numerous staffing cuts, and instead approved a so-called “level services” budget, increasing spending by 14% or about $8 million over the previous year. That put the ball in the mayor’s court to figure out whether to incorporate such an increase into a balanced city budget to submit to the City Council.

Already, more than 40 employees within the Northampton Public Schools have received notice that their jobs may be severely impacted by potential budget cuts. Around half of those employees received notice that their jobs will be eliminated, with the remainder facing the prospect of having to be moved around the school district to different positions.

The underlying causes of the situation the city faces with the school budget are twofold. Gone are the federal pandemic relief dollars, known as ESSER funds, that supplied some of the school’s staffing costs over the past several years. A major increase in staffing over the past five years and contractual agreements regarding cost-of-living pay increases have also factored into the growth of the school budget.

At JFK Middle School on Wednesday, members of the Northampton Association of School Employees (NASE) union, along with other western Massachusetts labor leaders, met to discuss how the city could sustain school officials’ requested increase in the budget, and to encourage members of the public to contact their local city councilors ahead of the May 16 council meeting.

Andrea Egitto, a kindergarten teacher at Ryan Road Elementary School and the president of NASE, acknowledged at the meeting that the school district had taken on much more staff since 2018, but defended the contractual raises and the need for more teachers in the district.

“First of all, 2018 was pre-pandemic, and you all know what happened to our children during the pandemic,” Egitto said. “Teachers that were at the top step were struggling, and most couldn’t afford to live in the city of Northampton … Our paraeducators, who worked with our most neediest and fragile students in the district, were not making a living wage. Most had to have two and three jobs.”

Egitto said the city’s general stabilization funds, consisting of cash from local receipts such as motor vehicle excise, cannabis and meals taxes, is well above state-recommended levels and that the city could afford to use money from them to help support the district. The city currently has around $33 million in various stabilization funds as of fiscal year 2023, the most recent year available, according to the state Department of Revenue.

“If you have all this money in your savings account and you get a leak in your basement, do you say, you can’t fix it?” Egitto said, adding the accounts are replenished through local receipts and should not be considered “one-time money.”

City officials argue, however, that the $33 million figure is misleading, noting that several of the stabilization funds are for specialized purposes, such as climate change measures and opioid settlements.

In an interview, Sciarra said that only two of the city’s stabilization funds, the General Stabilization Fund and the Fiscal Stability Fund, could be used for the school district, which have combined totals about $9.7 million, about a third of the city’s total savings. She also pushed back against the notion that free cash from local receipts constitute recurring payments.

“That amount changes every year … it’s not something that is consistent,” Sciarra said. “I think you don’t have a real picture of what the undesignated funds balance is usually if you’re looking at just the past couple of years.”

Sciarra also said if the city dipped too deeply into its stabilization funds, the city would lose it’s current AAA bond rating, leading to higher borrowing costs.

“We have the best possible bond rating right now, which allows us to bond and borrow at the lowest possible available interest rate,” Sciarra said. “If our bond rating degraded, then any borrowing that we need to do would cost the city and the taxpayers more.”

At a recent meeting held by the City Council’s Committee on Finance to discuss an audit for fiscal year 2023, Thomas Scanlon, the certified public accountant conducting the audit, had made several remarks regarding the city’s stabilization funds. He noted that around 24% of the city’s total revenue was in stabilization funds, well above the state-recommended 15%. However, he also cautioned against using using the funds to pay recurring costs.

“I’m not saying they can’t be for reoccurring, but if you think about it, one-time free cash is not reoccurring,” he said. “If you start spending more free cash than you’re generating, you’re eventually going to create a budget deficit again.”

Another suggestion by advocates to avoid staffing cuts has been to encourage intervention by Smith College, which forms a cornerstone of the city’s economic activity but is largely exempt from paying property taxes.

In other cities with high-profile colleges and universities, like Boston and Cambridge, there are agreements for payment in lieu of taxes (also called PILOT). In compensation for not having to pay property tax, nonprofits like Harvard and Mass General Hospital have paid millions to their home cities through PILOT agreements, although that still amounts to small fraction of what they would otherwise pay (Harvard’s overall endowment is about 25 times the size of Smith’s, for comparison).

Nykole Roche, the associate director of the Massachusetts Nurses’ Association labor union who attended Wednesday’s meeting, said that there was a coalition of local unions working to pressure Smith, along with Cooley Dickinson Hospital, to pay more to the city.

“Smith College, if it paid taxes on its currently untouched properties, would pay our city in 2024 alone $7 million. That closes the budget gap,” Roche said. “I’m willing to pay my property taxes, but it would be great if these huge wealthy institutions paid their fair share.”

Smith acknowledged in a statement to the Gazette that there is currently no PILOT program in place for the college. However, though most of its property holdings are exempt from tax, Smith does in fact pay property tax for some of its non-educational buildings. In FY 23, the school paid more than $604,000 in property taxes, more than any other property owner in the city, and an additional $1 million in fees for water and sewer, permits and inspections, according the school.

Sciarra also noted there is a bill in the state Legislature, H 2963, that would require nonprofits to pay 25% of what they would pay if their property tax were not exempt.

“If the Legislature is interested in passing that, that would be extremely helpful,” Sciarra said. “We have a good amount of property in Northampton that is tax exempt, so that would be a big help to our services.”

Airing concerns

Teachers, parents, and even students of the school district have turned out in force to try to head the staffing cuts. Last month, high school students occupied the mayor’s office in a sit-in protest, shortly before parents and students packed the community room of JFK Middle School when the School Committee met to vote on the budget they would send to the mayor’s office.

Katie Munson, an eighth grader at JFK, said that when she first arrived at the middle school, she struggled with issues of severe anxiety and that it was the teachers at the school that were able to help her through those issues.

“I have a little sister coming into JFK,” she said. “I really want her to feel accepted and valued the way these teachers make me feel here today. And I just really don’t want them [the teachers] to be taken away from us because I think that they’re some of the most inspirational people I’ve met in my life.”

Talia Garretson, a fellow eighth grader at JFK, said the potential loss of younger teachers would also have a negative impact on students at the school.

“If something happened to me in school, or something I was very concerned about, if I think of teachers who I would go to,they’re just all kind of on the younger side,” Garretson said. “I’m able to connect with them better, and I feel a lot safer talking to them.”

At Wednesday’s meeting at JFK, NASE members signaled that three of Northampton’s city councilors had indicated their support for preventing job cuts: Ward 3’s Quaverly Rothenberg, Ward 4’s Jeremy Dubs and Ward 7’s Rachel Maiore.

“What I am hearing is that this community wants fully funded schools,” said Rothenberg, who together with Dubs was present at the NASE meeting. “Until the community wants something different, I will not stop working with you because I know you are not stopping either.”

Sciarra said she was taking in the concerns of everyone in the community while crafting her budget proposal.

“I believe incredibly strongly in public education. I have been a fighter for public school funding all of my municipal time,” she said. “I have been really concerned about this situation for a long time and have been asking for us to figure out how best to work within the constraints that we’re in.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.