Video Recording:
Northampton Open Media 3-5-25 City Council
Click here to read more public commentary given throughout the last year.
“I looked at 20 schools around this area, 20 high schools around this area. I could not – could not – find a high school with a higher student-to-staff ratio than Northampton High School. Could not. “
Video Time: 38:11 – I teach at Northampton High School. I recognize that we’re concerned about money, we’re concerned about the budget, and how we spend our money, that’s important, but I’m not going to really get into a lot of the details there. I think it’s easy to kind of get into those details and get lost. For me, and again, same thing with hiring midyear versus not, that’s – people can think about that, that’s great, I appreciate those of you that do that. I’m not doing that.
I just want to think about – we’re operating in crisis mode, it feels like. So, we’re trying to put out fires at the various schools, we’re trying to make sure we’re in legal compliance with special ed needs. Stuff’s all important. That all speaks to the minimum.
I think we need to be talking about – what do we want our schools to be? What kinds of classes do we want to offer? What kinds of classes can we not offer right now?
Little side trip: I started looking at the Department of Education, the DESE data. I couldn’t—I looked at 20 schools around this area, 20 high schools around this area. I could not – could not – find a high school with a higher student-to-staff ratio than Northampton High School. Could not.
I went further, a little bit further. I went and looked in Fall River because I thought, okay, a town that doesn’t have a lot of resources. Nope. No. They have a way better staff-to-student ratio than we do.
Of the group that I looked at right around here, we’re about 15% higher than any of the other ones around. So, that’s 15% more students per staff by the state’s numbers. So, that’s bad. The next nearest ones were like Holyoke, Belchertown, Chicopee, and those were all at least somewhere between one and two staff members per student fewer—sorry, the other way around, students per staff member – than we are in Northampton. We’re way out of line.
“We’re operating in crisis mode, it feels like. So, we’re trying to put out fires at the various schools, we’re trying to make sure we’re in legal compliance with special ed needs. Stuff’s all important. That all speaks to the minimum.”
Video Time: 43:06 – I am the principal at Jackson Street. I’m here to compel you to support the midyear appropriation of $600,000 for our schools. While the situation is not without complication, my message is simple: listen to educators, believe us and act accordingly when we tell you what we need in order to provide a free and appropriate education for all of our students.
It has always been the case that public schools need more money. What’s happening at the federal level is alarming but it isn’t surprising. Public School Educators share a long history of being disrespected and devalued. That disrespect and devaluation is partially rooted in the fact that even today, according to the Pew Research Center, 77% of educators identify as women. The underfunding of public schools is a longstanding problem based on disregard for the work, disrespect for children, and a misogynist dismissal of those of us who teach them.
What my team at Jackson Street needs and deserves is a well-paid 8 hour workday (if NASE is amenable), so that after students leave, they are on paid time when they are doing the extraordinary amount of work outside of teaching that it takes to make that teaching happen.
What we need is a well-paid classroom paraeducator in every room who can support the complex work of keeping a classroom running smoothly.
What we need is money for teachers and administrators to receive meaningful professional development.
When you look at this broader context, an extra $600,000 is a drop in the bucket. I implore you to support this midyear appropriation as a means of literally putting your money where your mouth is, which is to say, as a way of standing up against the longstanding history of disrespect for public schools, as evidenced by budgets that do not reflect the brilliant, intense, complex, generative, powerful, intellectual, loving, personal, gut-wrenching, world changing, life-saving work our teachers do every day.
Support the appropriation and fund our schools properly in the future. Thank you, and see you tomorrow.
“The underfunding of public schools is a longstanding problem based on disregard for the work, disrespect for children, and a misogynist dismissal of those of us who teach them. “
Video Time: 45:50 – I’m a kindergarten teacher at Bridge Street, where I’ve taught for 10 years. I’m here tonight to advocate on behalf of the students in our kindergarten program. I’m here to ask that you restore the second reading interventionist at Bridge Street School so that kindergarten students can access the academic support needed to learn to read.
When literacy positions at Bridge Street were reduced from 2 to 1 during the last budget process, this resulted in kindergarten students losing access to reading support in the fall that had previously been provided. It also meant that two months ago, when we met to look at the most recent assessment data, seven of my students were identified as eligible for intervention because they were scoring well below grade level. They started the year this way, but only one of my students was able to be picked up. Dr. Bonner just said that the focus has been on K through 2, and one of my students was picked up and he receives five minutes of intervention a day. She doesn’t know.
I’m here to advocate for reading support for Bridge Street kindergarteners. As documented in previous school committee meetings, Bridge Street serves a student population that is 50% high-needs, as designated by DESE, the highest of the elementary schools in our district. We have four elementary schools, and each has two kindergarten classrooms. What you may not know is that Bridge Street kindergarten is the only program that does not have access to a grade-level special education teacher because our caseloads are so large. I shared mine with the intensive needs teacher, and he just left for another district. You ask me why outside of my two-minute time.
This means, though, across the city, at every single school—at Jackson Street, Ryan Road, Leeds—they all have dedicated grade-level teachers, and every child in those kindergarten classrooms goes through a rotation of targeted instruction. We can’t provide that at Bridge Street. There’s only one school in Northampton that doesn’t offer this frequency of instruction: it’s Bridge Street School.
What does it mean if a kindergartener’s access to education in Northampton is determined by their street address and their neighborhood?
“What you may not know is that Bridge Street kindergarten is the only program that does not have access to a grade-level special education teacher because our caseloads are so large. I shared mine with the intensive needs teacher, and he just left for another district.”
Video Time: 48:24 – I have two kids going to Jackson Street. So, I have a consideration and a question. The consideration is that I tend to agree, unfortunately, with the superintendent’s assessment that now it would become more challenging to fill the positions at this point in the year. But that’s exactly part of the reason why a large part of the community thought to avoid the cuts that went into effect in the last budget, because we knew it was going to be more difficult and more costly to rectify such a poor decision.
So, here comes a question. I look at the numbers presented by the superintendent and the school committee. The school committee proposed, basically, on average, $241 per student across the district. I see that from the survey, the only two schools that came anywhere close to the $241 are Bridge Street and Jackson Street at $236 and $230 per student. All the other ones came significantly lower: Leeds at $195, Ryan Road at $128, and then Jackson… JFK, sorry, – and Northampton High School—the middle school came in at $78 instead of $241, and the high school came in at $48 per student instead of $241.
So, I’m wondering why there’s such a discrepancy between what the school committee proposed and what the needs from the schools came out to.
“Our kids and our teachers are suffering because of a problem that the adults, that the government, that somebody—not our kids and not our teachers—created.”
Video Time: 50:57 – I have two children—one who is in second grade at Jackson Street School and another who receives services through the itinerant preschool program. You asked for questions, and my question is: why wouldn’t we try?
I have seen, this year, as our first year at Jackson Street School, the incredible work under such difficult circumstances that the teachers and the leadership of the school have done to make this year an incredible year for our second-grade students in particular, who have 26 children in each one of those classrooms. That puts us in the bottom 1% of Massachusetts state classrooms for second grade. So, I’ve seen what they’ve done and how much they’ve accomplished under such difficult circumstances. Why wouldn’t we give them a chance to fill these positions and make it right?
Our kids and our teachers are suffering because of a problem that the adults, that the government, that somebody—not our kids and not our teachers—created. So, why wouldn’t we be protecting them and trying to do the best for them and solving these problems by looking in other places and giving our schools a chance to try to fill these positions, to make it right, to do right by our kids? Thank you.
Video Time: 52:39 – I am a JFK paraprofessional and have been so for 10 years, and one of the things that I just wanted to make really clear is I was a midyear hire, and I have been here for 10 years. There have been others of us who have been here longer than I have as midyear hires. So, when we go there and we get our foot in the door, we make changes for the school. And that is something that I think you are forgetting, is that when we walk in, it doesn’t matter what part of the year it is. If we know our job and we are educated to do our job, then we’re going to do it well.
The other thing I’m asking is that you do the whole $600,000 because it’s so important that our kids start gaining instead of losing. And finally, I want to thank every teacher, every para, every clerical staff, and every custodial staff because we’re why these schools are still standing. We are why, because we put our students and each other before ourselves. That’s collaboration. That is what we do every single day when we walk into our buildings. And the fact that we are not acknowledged for that, and we are told that we need to do more collaborating. Collaborating, for me, looks like when our tiered support person is like, “I haven’t been to the bathroom all day, can you come?” Absolutely, I’m collaborating with that person there so they can get what they need, and I can help out.
We do it every single day. There was a car crash on 91, and 10 of our teachers couldn’t make it into the building. Do you know, not one of those classrooms was not unstaffed. There’s a Para, there was somebody in there. That’s what we do on a daily basis. Please help us out.
Video Time: 55:31 – I am the president of the Northampton Association of School Employees. I’m also a kindergarten teacher at Ryan Road School.
I want to start by saying that I’m dismayed that our superintendent is only asking for half of the mid-year appropriation that she was directed to ask for by an 8-2 vote of the school committee. One of those two that voted no was the mayor. That means eight out of nine school committee members voted that we needed $600,000.
Educators, parents, caregivers, and students have been speaking for months and months about the crisis going on in our schools. This midyear appropriation would help to alleviate that, and I understand the concern for not being able to roll in the money. We’ve been hearing this over and over again. However, what we need now is to take care of our children, and whatever we can do – I appreciated Councilor Jarrett’s ability to start to make a plan for that – but I don’t think you should be listening to the amount that the superintendent is asking for.
I want to give you two comments. One, to Councilor Moulton’s concern about midyear hires: we have many midyear hires—you just heard from one speaking. We have some in the room—many midyear hires who have been in the district for years and years and are incredible educators, both paraprofessionals and educators alike.
In 2018, the district cut 23 para positions with the WINs model. Not one para was laid off that year, and one of the reasons is because paraeducators can sometimes be a stepping stone position. So, we often have a lot of turnover from year to year. Even if we took that $600,000 and hired just paraprofessionals in addition to the second-grade teacher at Jackson Street, the special ed teacher at Ryan Road, and the reading and math interventionists at Bridge Street — those are just four educators, right? And if we took just those four educators and made up the difference with paraeducators, I bet we wouldn’t have to lay off any of them because the turnover would be enough to fill that $600,000, which is what we really need.
Our superintendent is not advocating for what we need, and we have many new principals who didn’t really know what to ask for in the face of their superintendent. We heard from one who knew what to ask for; she is our most senior. So, listen to her. Thank you.
“They cannot wait for the state. They cannot wait for next year. Their brains and bodies do not have the privilege of time.”
Video Time: 58:44 – There is a quote that says, “Allowing a student with a hidden disability to struggle without the support needed for success or appropriate accommodations is no different than failing to provide a ramp for a person in a wheelchair.” I know that no one on the finance committee would ever deny a ramp to a child in a wheelchair, even a temporary ramp. So why do you insist on continuing to deny supports for developmentally disabled children like mine?
My son is disabled. He attends JFK. He struggled all year due to understaffing. His IEP has been violated. I filed a complaint with DESE. I’m one of many families with children who have been affected this year due to budget cuts and understaffing in our schools, particularly children with IEPs. The city has the funds to support my child and other children like him. Please do not deny him his ramp for the remainder of this school year. Ten weeks, five weeks, even one week with a ramp is better than no ramp. This is true for my beautiful son and other children like him in the district. They cannot wait for the state. They cannot wait for next year. Their brains and bodies do not have the privilege of time.
The city has the funds. It’s a choice you’re making to either hoard them for some future potential use or provide ramps for children who need them now. So, in this month of March, which happens to be Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, I ask the finance committee to please choose disabled children over savings. Please choose disabled children and their civil rights over savings. Please choose children over savings. And also, listen to educators.
My question to Dr. Bonner is two-part: In the final list you provided, did that include all the requests from the principals? In other words, did the principals ask for additional supports that you did not approve? If so, why did you not approve them? Thank you.
Video Time: 1:00:54 – I am the history and social studies teacher and department chair at Northampton High School. I’m also the Unit A coordinator for the Northampton Association of School Employees. I want to start with a couple of quick statements about this idea that we somehow can’t find qualified people midyear. That’s absolutely, utterly ridiculous. One of the finest paraeducators I know, who is sitting right over here behind me, was a midyear hire. One of the other fabulous kindergarten teachers in the room was also a midyear hire.
There was an open position at Bridge Street School, and it’s my understanding that at the faculty meeting this week, the principal was gleefully exclaiming that she found a Grinspoon winner to take that position. At the high school where I am, we just hired a new Spanish teacher who started two weeks ago. She’s a native speaker, she’s an NHS graduate, and she’s awesome. So, that’s utterly ridiculous because people’s lives change. People do not live on a September-to-June calendar in the real world.
I also have a couple of questions. I would like to know if there was a process of collaboration amongst the building principals. We have a lot of new principals. So, did the principals sit together and try to figure out how to best use that $600,000, or were they asked in isolation?
In addition, I would like to know if Dr. Bonner collaborated with the mayor to produce a reduced amount. The school committee tasked the superintendent with coming up with $600,000 worth of improvements. We know interventions can be two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. I would like to know why there aren’t more interventionists included to make up that other $300,000. We know the children need it. We’ve been hearing about it for months. Every single teacher in the district will tell you they need it. Thank you.
Video Time: 1:03 – I have three questions, and then I have one statement.
My first question is: I would really like to know which one of the counselors on the budget committee has ever run a classroom, hired a teacher, monitored a recess, or taught anyone how to read?
My second question is: Why aren’t our talented principals trusted to make good staffing decisions midyear?
My third question is: Why is the city dismantling its public schools?
And my statement is: I would like to thank all of the teachers who, every day, work their hardest for my son at the high school. I’m not going to name them, but I want to thank them. I would like you to know that despite their best work, my son’s IEP has been violated this year, even though my teachers have worked their hardest. I think you have the power to stop this, and you should use it. Thank you.
Video Time: 1:04 – I’m a paraeducator at Northampton High School. I’m going to say two things real quick and tell a quick story. I want to thank you, Stan, for your newsletter. I appreciate it every time it comes out. That $40,000 appropriation was in response to a health and safety grievance that was filed on behalf of teachers and paraeducators who are getting the crap kicked out of them every day at one of our elementary schools. That needs to be made clear. There was a reason that appropriation was made when it was made.
The other thing I want to say is that I am a midyear hire, and one of the best paraeducators I know is also in this room, and she was a midyear hire. So, I want to just debunk that right now.
I want to tell a quick story. When my daughter was in the first grade at Jackson Street School, Miss Agna was her principal, and my daughter received reading intervention from Mr. McDonald. Remember Mr. McDonald? Mr. McDonald’s job was cut at the end of my daughter’s first grade year. She had one year of reading intervention, and her services just ceased. I went to her teachers every year—third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade—and I said, “Something’s not right with my daughter. I’m telling you something’s not right.” They would tell me not to worry about it. She does so well.
In seventh grade, I again went to a teacher and I said, “I think something’s not right,” and the teacher said to me—and I will never forget that—”She gets all A’s, what are you worried about?” And I said, “She gets all A’s in the seventh grade, and she spells ‘girl’ G-R-I-L. Something’s not right.”
I continued to question it. I was in the system. I didn’t know how to address it or get her what she needed. She was in the 11th grade when she was diagnosed with a reading disability. The 11th grade. She fought her hardest and worked her hardest and found ways to succeed in spite of her reading disabilities.
But you know who would have and have missed that reading disability? Mr. McDonald in first grade. Thank you.
Video Time: 1:08 – I want to speak to Dr. Bonner saying that she was concerned about coming and using money now because she would need to come back for the budget later and she didn’t want to spoil that. It came across as if it would feel like it was greedy to ask for money in the budget or ask for money now, and she had no assurance that the money she would get now would be rolled into the money that would be awarded to her in the budget.
And that is the discrepancy that I think is really in front of us. You, counselors and school committee members, received some projections on the budget from the Supporter Schools group about alternative ways to be able to afford to fund the schools without robbing the city, without losing essential services, without depleting our stabilization funds. And I hope you’ve had some time to look at it and think about it. We would be more than glad to have some discussions with you about it. But the bottom line is, it’s there because we’ve done the work to really think about how we can do this, how we don’t have to have a superintendent who is worried about having to come back and beg for the money to do the work she knows needs to be done in our schools. Thanks.
Video Time: 1:09 – I am the reading interventionist on Bridge Street. This past October, I went from working 80% to 100%. Now, most of the students at Bridge Street receive five days of reading intervention like all the other elementary schools. However, it still is not enough. My first-grade students are seen five days a week, yet I only have one time slot available to work with third graders. As a result, I see some third-grade students two times a week and others three times a week during the same time slot. I cannot make a significant difference in the reading with the limited time I’m seeing them.
Every September and January, we do benchmark assessments to ensure students are on grade level. Then if not, during the data review meeting for each grade, we determine students who need additional reading support. It has been determined that there are an additional 19 third, fourth, and fifth-grade students who are not being serviced because I do not have the time to see them. 19 could be your grandson, your niece, or your neighbor, and they are not getting the help they need to become proficient readers.
In addition, I have one slot available for kindergarten students, as Laura Mangones has talked about. As a result, I rotate the students, and I provide short periods of instruction. However, there are 14 kids who are not at grade level and need more intensive, explicit instruction. Intervention is best provided early, and I am not able to provide the needed instruction to these children. Classroom teachers are frustrated that many of their students are not receiving the extra help that they need, and they are also overwhelmed that it falls on them.
In the 11 years that I’ve worked at Bridge Street, except for this year, there have been two reading interventionists making an equivalent or full-time position. This allowed us to pick up more students, although these students were not seen for five days. Even with two reading interventionists in the past, we still couldn’t meet the students’ needs.
Bridge Street has the largest population of multilingual and low-socioeconomic elementary students in the district. In the past, money has been distributed equally among the schools. However, this is not equitable. We are the most needy elementary school, and we do not have the staff available to meet this greater need. It is my hope that you will allocate the $600,000 to fund interventionists and tutors as well as positions. Thank you.
Video Time: 1:12 – I moved to Northampton in August. I was excited to move here. I was told that the schools were really good. The teachers are great. The paras are great. The administration in the district are a wreck. My kids are at Bridge Street. I’ve alternately been lied to, misled, and dismissed as a parent with two children there. My son is eight. He has an IEP. He deserves a good future, just like all children. That’s much harder when he gets five different paras in eight days, or gets someone “permanent” who’s removed without an explanation or a word after one week, or just doesn’t have anyone for half the day, three days of the week, for months.
Most recently, I’m being told a para is with him on some days when there’s noone there most of the day. I’m in the middle of a DESE complaint, like many parents. These IEP violations are expensive lawsuits waiting to happen. I don’t blame the administrators for the most part. This is structural. When institutions are gutted, people turn on each other. Though, I think it is despicable for the mayor and the appointed head of the school district to try to lower how much money is being allocated by the school committee to schools that have been gutted. As our only Title One school, Bridge Street is hit the hardest, as so many people have said tonight.
At all schools, a lack of funding hurts some students much more than others in completely predictable ways. The current set of funding choices is exactly what Northampton claims to be against: institutional racism, ableism, and violence against children. These choices of violence that the city is making – you all can start to undo at this exact moment, tonight and tomorrow. Please vote for this allocation to save what is an imploding school system and undo the harm the city is causing to my children, other children, teachers, and families.
Video Time: 1:19 – I’m a special education teacher for Northampton for 20 plus years. I wanted to speak tonight about updating our iReady Benchmark testing for grades four and five at Bridge Street School. I’ve spoken previously about our Fall benchmarking, and I was concerned about the lack of services our general education students were receiving. There were 65 tested. Students that are two or three years below grade level – there were 11 general education students who were below grade level, receiving no services. There were two general education students who were three years below grade level, receiving no services. There were 12 students in general education who were one year below grade level. That says that there are 23 students currently in grades four and five who are reading at grade level out of 65. We need those interventionists. Those children deserve those interventionists to read and be independent learners. Thank you.
Video Time: 1:21 – There was an op-ed in the paper this week by the guy Kevin Lake, and it was quite funny. It was about how Support Our Schools does nothing, but he sort of made us sound like toddlers, we give misinformation, disinformation. We don’t know anything. It’s like we’re a bunch of drunk babies.
So, we all kind of thought that was funny, it made us mad, and it’s like, okay, do your best. But you guys have seen what Tyler Barnett did tonight, and I want to tell Kevin Lake, you know, Kevin, I wish we were like that because that sounds kind of fun—being a little bit drunk and being able to do anything you want—but we’re not like that. We work like hell. I don’t know – these people have jobs, the people in Support Our Schools, and they have kids, and they manage to work all the time. We are meeting constantly, we’re researching, and I just—I’m really proud of that, and I’m really proud of what Tyler did.
We’ve been trying to get alternative budgets for months. We talked to economists, we talked to every economist professor we know, and Tyler worked with Alex, and that worked out great. Alex helped him understand the modeling, and he did it. He produced something really interesting, and I’m really glad about that.
The other thing I want to say is that there was a comment made talking about the budget, that the budget we do now would impact the budget for years to come. But what we didn’t talk about is the other entity that will be impacted for years to come by the budget that we make, and that’s the kids in the school. They’ve come up very little. It’s always the impact of the students, and if they have their needs met, what’s that going to do to the budget and our surplus? We hardly ever say, except on this side of the room and some of you, what’s the impact of the budget on kids? Thank you.
Video Time: 1:23 – I’m a special education teacher at Bridge Street, and I wanted to just build a little bit on what my two colleagues shared. We talk a lot about reading, but we also haven’t been talking about math. In grades four and five, the lack of interventionists and what some short-term help – the difference that could make—could make a significant difference for students who are currently receiving no help.
Our winter benchmarking assessments in grades four and five – there are six students who are two years behind grade level. These are general education students, not special education, who are not receiving any support. So, they are fourth and fifth graders learning at second and third grade levels, at least six of them, who get nothing.
In fifth grade, there are another six students, so that’s 12 students in grades four and five who are two years behind in math or more. Some are three years behind. There are an additional 13 students in grade four and 12 students in grade five who have been marked in the yellow and are falling at least one year behind.
So, the amount of – difference that it could make for us to even have two months of an interventionist to support our upper-grade students, who currently get nothing in math, is critical. We ask for your support for Bridge Street because upper grades are going to middle school, as you know, and we have students who are still adding on their fingers and who still can’t break down a two-step word problem, and they need help. That type of intervention can make a significant difference. Thank you.
Video Time: 1:25 – I was sitting at home watching this, and when I heard the testimony, I felt the need to come down and be in this room. A year ago – I was a retired man. I had served my community someplace else for a long time, starting around the issue of public education. I’m actually astounded by what’s going on in this city, a city that is flush with cash but has a leadership that is blinded by this dogma of an old plan—that’s what, 10 years old now, older, more than 10 years old—and an absolute refusal to consider any modification, despite the fact that circumstances have changed, the needs of the children have increased.
Public education is being slowly destroyed. It’s a death of a thousand cuts. It’s impacting children. You all know that. You all hear this. You have to be touched by what you hear going on, and yet there’s no action because you’re worried about this number and that number. It’s been clear to me for a long time, following this issue, that the city has bitten off way more than it can chew financially, and it’s been focused on things instead of people. You’ve lost focus on the basics of local government. That – what you call the fiscal stability plan, which is actually a capital spending plan in reality- because that’s where the money goes, has to be changed, and you have to prioritize people instead of things. That’s the only way you will solve this problem. Thank you.
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[…] appropriation for the $600,000 is far better than waiting until next September.” Additional Public Comment was also provided at the March 5th Finance subcommittee […]