NORTHAMPTON — Comments made by school officials, parents and Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra during a public hearing Thursday on the school budget for the next fiscal year indicate the city will face another tense showdown this spring over prospective staff cuts.

Superintendent Portia Bonner earlier in the month unveiled three proposals for fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1, in a slideshow at the School Committee meeting. Each plan offers a different scenario for the school district going forward: a “strong” budget that allows the school to add additional resources; a “level-services” budget that avoids any staff cuts; and the “city’s fiscal target” budget, which would result in staffing cuts.

According to Bonner, the “strong” budget envisions a 13.24% increase from the current year, bringing the total budget to $46.6 million. The “level-services” budget calls for a 7.7% increase to $44.3 million and would prevent any staff cuts, and the “fiscal target” budget produces a 4% increase to $42.6 million, but would also lead to more staffing cuts.

During Thursday’s meeting, Sciarra told the School Committee that she favored the fiscal target budget, maintaining her stance from last year’s budget season that lead to significant backlash and numerous protests from supporters of a level-services budget. She explained her position by saying she had held recent meetings with Massachusetts Mayors’ Association along with financial and bond experts that indicated the economy could be entering into a recession, compounded by the current political instability at the federal level under President Donald Trump.

“I do have to share some sort of economic reality. It’s a hard aspect of my job, but I think it’s one of the main reasons why this position sits on this body,” said Sciarra, referring to her positions as both mayor and chair of the School Committee. “We’re not talking about any increases or anything for any other department in the city, so that is the hard economic reality. I’ll tell you it sucks that it’s my job to share it with you, but that is what it is.”

The city’s budget for the current fiscal year carried an 8% increase in city spending for the schools over the previous year, but still led to around 20 job cuts in the district, though many of those jobs were later restored or new jobs added through appropriations by the city later in the year.

During Thursday’s meeting, Bonner said that more than 20 jobs could be impacted next year by a fiscal target budget, although she emphasized that number was far from determined and no decisions had been made on which positions might be cut.

“It’s not an accurate count unless we actually look at the positions that we are going to actually reduce,” Bonner said. “I would not make that decision randomly. I would have that conversation with the administrators.”

Bonner also stated she had recently formed a working group to discuss the possibility of consolidating the city’s four elementary schools, although those discussions were very early.

“That is a part of our strategic plan,” Bonner said of potential school consolidation. “[There’s] a lot of conversation, a lot of thoughts.”

Ward 4 Committee Member Mike Stein, an advocate for providing more funding to schools, maintained his opinion that the strong budget was the best way forward for the school district, saying it was the best way for the city to “live up to our values.”

“I would argue there’s no better place to shore up funding than the one universal public institution we have control of in this municipality, and that’s our schools,” Stein said. “We really need to re-evaluate what our priorities are in a crisis moment, and really center the needs of the most vulnerable in our community, which are children and especially children with no other means to do anything else.”

Also advocating for the strong budget was Brian Wilby, a Northampton resident who said he had three kids in the Northampton Public School system. Wilby spoke during the public comments period of the public hearing.

“What we have right now is inadequate, it’s unsatisfactory, so just by the process of elimination that means for level services to continue for next year would be unsatisfactory,” Wilby said. “The strong budget seems like the only option that is viable for us.”

The School Committee will meet again next month for further budget discussion before voting on a recommendation to send to the City Council, which will ultimately vote on the final budget to be appropriated to the schools.

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