NORTHAMPTON — With memories of contentious debate over the last school budget still fresh on the minds of residents and city officials, Northampton Public Schools Superintendent Portia Bonner has unveiled three prospective paths for next year’s budget.

The superintendent presented the three proposals for fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1, in a slideshow at the School Committee meeting on Thursday. 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 the “fiscal target” budget produces a 4% increase to $42.6 million.

After much debate last spring, the City Council adopted a school budget for the current fiscal year that increased funding by 8% from the previous year, more than twice what the mayor had originally proposed but still leading to more than 20 school job cuts in the district.

The increase came after a sustained effort by the Northampton Association of School Employees union and local advocates for greater school funding, who have since coalesced into a group known as Support Our Schools.

In her presentation to the School Committee on Thursday, Bonner noted that since fiscal year 2019, student enrollment has decreased by nearly 8%, while staffing increased by 9% in the same time period.

“We’re expecting 132 less students for next year,” Bonner said. “We do lose students to the charter schools, to the private schools; more and more of our high school students are selecting Smith [Vocational & Agricultural High School], and actually that’s a trend across the nation, that students are looking for those opportunities.”

In a letter to the committee and to Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, Bonner also flagged concerns about the potential loss of federal funding, as President Donald Trump has threatened to withhold money from schools that support transgender participation in athletics. Bonner said in the letter that the school district received $1.75 million in federal support this fiscal year.

“Our budget restraints are not a one-year problem but one that compounds year after year,” Bonner wrote in the letter. “Although we will always keep the best interests of students at the center of our decisions, we have the responsibility to be good stewards of public funds.”

A slide in Bonner’s presentation also breaks down the three prospective budgets and various investments or reductions each one would bring.

In the case of a level-services budget, the district would be able to “create special programming for medically fragile and students with severe disabilities with current staffing,” along with hiring two additional special education teachers.

Under the strong budget, many of the jobs cut during the last budget would be restored, including math and reading interventionists, special education teachers and a school psychologist at Northampton High School.

The fiscal target budget would cause further reduction of staffing and the elimination of all requested new positions with the exception of special education staff.

Ward 4 committee member Michael Stein, who last year advocated for a level-services budget and strongly opposed the mayor’s budget, spoke skeptically of Bonner’s proposals.

“What we’re talking about the level service is sort of the current state of affairs we have now, which isn’t great,” Stein said. “My quick read of the strong budget is that it gets us basically back to where we were with some changes that should also help, but we still aren’t doing anything to address literacy at JFK or NHS in a significant or appropriate way, and we’re doing nothing to address class sizes at NHS.”

Stein also criticized a series of slides in Bonner’s presentation that listed five strategic plan objectives for the next school year. “Objective 1” is listed as achieving net-zero carbon emissions at school facilities, while the last two objectives listed are to improve English and math scores for students with disabilities and low-income students, and to “strengthen the sense of connection and belonging” experienced by students and staff, respectively.

“I’m struck every time I look at it, that we don’t get down to actual student needs until goals four and five,” Stein said. “Putting the capital spending in here is sort of to say, we’re spending a lot of money on you, it’s a very weird thing because it’s not part of our budget.”

Bonner replied that the objectives were not listed in order of priority. When Bonner tried to further respond, Stein told her she had not been recognized and that he had the floor, a sign of still-simmering tensions over school funding issues in the city.

At-large committee member Aline Davis also defended Bonner’s objectives in response to Stein.

“I thought to myself, ‘Hey are these in order?’ And then I said no,” Davis said. “For me I just see all of this as so inescapably intertwined and they just can’t just pull them apart.”

With the proposals now presented, the Budget & Property Subcommittee will discuss the different approaches before the committee reconvenes again next month for further discussion.

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