Financial Report: Superintendent & Business Manager

Video Recording: Northampton Open Media – School Committee 4/11/24

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Video Time Stamp: 2:59:01

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra: So we we’ll move up item F under new business to do the vote to approve the FY25 school budget and then we’ll go back and do the rest of the agenda. Dr. Bonner, did you want to lead off?

Dr. Portia Bonner: Yes, I could do that. Let me just… Where’s Lucy? 

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra: Oh, she’s right there. 

Dr. Portia Bonner: Be ready (signals to Lucy).  Thank you to the community, staff, caregivers, and students who have been speaking vehemently about the concerns about next year’s operating budget and express feelings to reductions. Your emails, letters, calls, and personal conversations are duly noted and part of the public record.

So, how did we get to this fiscal cliff? The budget gap we are experiencing has been years in the making and is a result of multiple factors:

• Overuse of school choice revenue beyond sustainable levels
• Increase in staffing from fiscal year 2018 to 2024
• The last union  contract agreements increases salaries exceeding city revenue growth
• Reliance on Esser funds for recurring expenses
• Pandemic-related stressors
• Outside factors such as Chapter 70 and the Student Opportunity Act

For the past 10 years, the city has provided a minimum of 3% increase to Northampton Public Schools since the inception of the fiscal stability plan. Prior to this fiscal policy, there were years of volatility with appropriations less than a 1% increase.

The first view budget of 7.97%, or my recommended budget, was presented in December. It was developed collaboratively with administrators and directors, with the notion of the city’s fiscal target of 4%. This budget maintains priorities aligned with the district’s goals that are reflective of our focus on equity, teaching and learning, school climate, and operational management.

In keeping with these priorities, the budget:

• Maintains current academic programs by integrating existing resources
• Targets classroom sizes to 25 plus or minus
• Reduces staffing by reviewing master schedules in schools
• Reallocates resources to provide extended services to our students who are underperforming
• Provides a rigorous curriculum
• Maintains support staff currently in place in our schools and classrooms
• Maintains special education services of current  identified students

Video Time Stamp: 3:02:06

Clarifications to the  public and the misleading information that is surfacing. The first view budget bottom line is $40,778,585, this INCLUDES, I repeat, INCLUDES the $1.2 million allocation that was given last to address the gap, the first piece of misinformation thats floating out there. 

Within the first view budget, there are suggested reductions and Bobby Jones will take you through those recommendations shortly. A list of additional reductions that works off of the first view budget was compiled to meet an increase of only 4%  This was prepared at the request of the school committee during the April 1st meeting. These recommend cuts impact support staff and are NOT DIRECT cuts to classrooms. For instance, academic support teachers are NOT directly assigned to a classroom, they are interventionists.

The bottom line for a 4% increase is $39,276,777.

There is mention of a third option, which was NOT presented to the school committee that is surfacing. That is a 13.34% or 17%, that excludes the $1.2 million one-time allocation that is being labeled “level service budget”. This was generated from the original requests of administrators during budget talks and was the starting point to ascertain what we needed to do  to achieve a fiscal responsible budget. 

The bottom line for this untenable budget is $42,805,908. A true “level service budget” would be the continuation of current services with contractual increases.

This cannot occur due to the removal of positions tied to ESSR funding. As the school committee is tasked with tonight’s vote, we can look to other surrounding districts who have already voted on their school budgets:

Ludlow, that has an enrollment of over 2,200 students in fiscal 2024, the district reduced their staffing by 20 full-time positions this current fiscal year that they will be going into in terms of fiscal year 2025, has a 3% budget increase that is below level service but will not result in reductions. The district intends to use school choice and unused fiscal 2024 circuit breaker funds.

South Hadley, with 1,644 students, reductions include four full-time teaching staff and 23 paraprofessional positions their recommended budget of $25.5 million.

Longmeadow,  2,773 students, their approved budget features reductions in multiple positions, including student support teachers, elementary and middle school music, and a special education teacher and supervisor.

Amherst-Pelham, 1,210 students, approved a $35.75 million budget, and said that we must note that within this it is an 8.2% increase and it saved them from  doing 15 positions to reduce to meet this, however that still has to be approved.  

Amherst, with 150 students, recommended a $27.2 million budget, this is an increase of $1,281,964 above the fiscal year we are currently in.

Easthampton, 1,397 students, the school committee approved a 9.78% increase with no reductions. This has not been approved by the city yet.

Regardless of the budget outcome, it is important as a community to remember we must work together collaboratively.  After a decision is made by both the school committee and the city we will have to work together to make these changes viable while still providing a rich educational experience for our children .

Part of my comments include words from Lucy Brus, the president of the senior class at NHS, who spoke to me during the student protest yesterday.

After she speaks, Bobby Jones, the District’s business manager, will take us through the suggested reductions for the various percentages.

Video Time Stamp: 3:07:30

NHS Senior Class President: Okay, I first want to thank our superintendent, Dr. Bonner, for giving me the opportunity to speak once more before the budget vote. You have heard a lot of feelings from a lot of people about how these cuts will affect students, families, and our community as a whole. There have been multiple budgets proposed, and I am pretty sure that Dr. Bonner talked about the 8% First Look budget, then the 4% Mayor’s budget, and like –  updated version which has included a lot of extra cuts, and then the Level Services, which are, to my knowledge, the three proposed budgets that have been floated.

I want to touch base on how the cuts will, as a whole, affect NHS, and then also the other schools as part of my comments. At NHS, to my knowledge, these cuts –  okay. Teachers have to be what’s called ‘pink-slipped,’ which means alerted that their position may be cut partially or fully, by April 15th, which means that they have already been alerted that if these cuts go through, their positions may be cut. So, us as students and community members within NHS already know what positions are on the line and what teachers may be cut partially or fully. Those teachers include, as stated, the theater teacher position for the arts department;  as of today I learned two history teacher positions;  a math teacher position would be cut fully – not in part but fully – and then a science teacher would move to teaching part math, part science, which would be a 50% decrease in both departments. Now, I can speak that no teacher can live on a 50% salary, barely on a full-time salary, so to think that a teacher would keep a job that is at a 50% salary is absurd. So, by proposing 50% cuts, we are proposing full position cuts, because no person is going to take that job, especially not here in Northampton where teachers can barely live on their full-time salaries here in our town. 

On top of these cuts, to meet the 4% Mayor’s budget  there have been additional reductions proposed. Those reductions at NHS include a guidance counselor, which was briefly spoken on in the first portion of the meeting from the other NHS students. This would bring our caseload to 300 students – each guidance counselor’s caseload to 300 students. Letters of recommendation would not be able to be filled out, which means when we apply to colleges, they would have to check a box saying we don’t do letters of recommendations here at NHS, which is not a good look on our district. Um, an adjustment counselor would be taken away. Now, that adjustment counselor is the only adjustment counselor who can see students without a 504 or IEP. That leaves her caseload at about 700 students. Those 700 students would not have an adjustment counselor because the 504 and IEP students need all three other adjustment counselors to meet their caseloads. So, that’s 700 students without a counselor.

Um, other proposed cuts, which I have here on my phone today: a salary freeze for all staff, which means no staff will go up in steps, they will keep exactly what they have this year, which is honestly insulting and against the union contracts. At the elementary schools, it would be a tiered support from Bridge Street, from Jackson Street, and from Leeds. As stated previously, that is a safety concern for our schools. Our students cannot be served and cannot be in a public school that is not safe, and these staff members make it safe. So, to put our students at a safety risk with these budget cuts? Again, insulting and dangerous.

Academic support teachers from Jackson Street, Leeds, and Ryan Road – those students who are already at disadvantages with their learning are going to be put further at disadvantages and are not going to catch up. We’re in a literacy crisis here in America, and I’m sure it’s affecting our district here in Northampton, and we are making it worse with these cuts. At JFK, all extracurricular stipends would be reduced, so any teacher who does a club, gives students that extra time, they would not get paid for that. Any other stipends outside of just their main salary, they would not get paid for that, which means we are going to be in a position we were in when I was in seventh grade where there is no extra time after school, there is no time with our teachers in the middle school, and that was a really hard time.

All staff stipends for department chair and team leader will be cut, which means every person who is a department chair at NHS and JFK will not be paid for their extra work that goes into scheduling and planning and serving students, so they won’t do it, which means we will not have the vital things that they give to our other teachers and to their department and to the students. Extra per diem adjustment and guidance counselor days—I had to ask what that was because I didn’t know what that was. Apparently, our adjustment and guidance counselors get paid per day for extra days to do scheduling, letters of recommendation, and other very necessary tasks –  that would be cut, which means they wouldn’t do it, which means our students would not be scheduled for their classes.

At NHS, our Innovations and Pathways internship coordinator will be cut. That runs our TA programs, our work-study programs, our internships, our IT Pathways, our healthcare Pathways, our peer tutoring network. I don’t know if you can name another job in this district that has that many things under its belt. That is so  many students served. That caseload is enormous. To cut that position is taking away all opportunities for these students. I have done internships; it’s taking away all those opportunities from students. And that is what makes Northampton special. But not only – that’s just what makes Northampton High School function, to give students these other opportunities. It’s not a luxury – it’s a necessity.

And then again at NHS, the extracurricular stipends, the department head stipends, the extra per diem counselor days—all cut there too. So our middle and high school students would not have teachers – anyone – be able to serve them outside of school time, which is a necessary function of our schools.

And to my knowledge, at the central office, the school committee stipends would be cut. Which, it’s not the top of my concern, but I’m sure it’s a concern of yours. You are putting in this work and I do believe you deserve to be compensated for that. And to not be compensated for that is probably insulting to a lot of people, since our teachers are not being compensated. So, I hope you can understand a little bit of how they feel.

Our school committee supplies will be cut,  and our special education teacher stipends district-wide will be cut. I don’t know what that means, but I know it’s not good. And I should know what it means! The fact is, this budget is not accessible and this information is not accessible. So, I have put in a lot of work today to understand it. I have spent a lot of my time out of the day talking to department heads and talking to teachers about what it means, and I actually do know what it means because I did that. I shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to fight to know what my city and my district –  how they’re budgeting. I shouldn’t have to fight for that, but I did. And so now, I am urging you before this vote to vote for our students, our families, our teachers, our city. It is not a luxury to have an education. It is not a luxury to fund our schools. It is a necessity that we have as a city, in service to our community.

So, with that, I’m going to end my remarks. And please, please vote for a Level Services budget. 

Video Time Stamp: 3:15:48

Dr. Portia Bonner: So thank you very much, Lucy. I appreciate that. That was a conversation that took place yesterday, but there are some things that you spoke of just now that we’ll give clarification to.

So, when you are looking at and putting together budgets, there are many things that you must consider, which includes contract languages and where all these stipend positions are coming from and what they mean. And that was something that was bargained by the actual union. And so literally these stipends are  to support any additional things or tasks that the individual may be required to do as a part of their job.

With that, though, however, I do need to correct you. The RIF notices, which is the Reduction in Force, we have until May 1st, and that is by statute and that’s by law. We have 60 calendar days to provide that notification. So I just want to make sure that everyone hears that so that there’s no misinformation out there because that keeps happening.

And so, I also want to clarify in terms of how budgets are put together. Budgets are not just randomly coming out of the blue. You know, we look at what we currently have and we roll it over. However, the administrators…(pause) I’m sorry, I had to pause, because I was so quiet while everybody else was talking and hearing, you know, undertone sounds. I’m sorry, it just gives me a pause. 

So when we put this budget together, there were conversations with principals who talked about their needs at their buildings. You would think that principals in conversation with their staff could have a very good conversation about their needs.

So the next step is, then, if we are meeting a target, how can we make those reductions? Those suggestions came from our administrators in conversations, and we did it as a group knowing that we wanted to maintain certain areas in terms of the needs of the schools. That’s how a budget is developed; it’s not just coming at a whim. 

And then I want to also share that the things that our business manager is about to go through, it’s not budget. It’s the list of reductions that we’re going to take you through to get to the bottom line. That’s what’s going to be. That’s not a budget that you see attached to this agenda, those are the list of reductions. The 4% list actually came from recommendations that I heard from the committee, and they said specifically, “stay out of the classroom”, so that’s where that list came from, with recommendations of where we should look. And that’s how it came to be; that’s how it evolved. So it’s not just at a whim, and I want to share that with the public. 

So at this point, I’m going to ask if Bobby Jones would take us through – she is our business manager- take us through those two reduction lists. She will start with the 7.97% with the first view, and then she will take us through the 4%.”

Video Time Stamp 3:19:11

Bobbie Jones: Ok, can you pull up that document for me?

Dr. Portia Bonner:  I certainly can. Give me just a second. 

Bobbie Jones: So while Dr. Bonner is pulling that up, I just want to say that we started with the first draft budget. I say ‘first draft’ because you have to have a point from where you start, and that came out of conversations with our ALT team, principals, department heads, etc. So, we came up with a number of $42,805,908. That’s the first draft.

From there, that number includes some positions that were funded by ESSER. It included some requests but not all from conversations with various people. And from there, we made the cuts down to the first view budget, which we’ll be going through in a minute. As well, we did have some reductions and corrections that were made from the first draft to the first view, and we’ll show that.

Dr. Portia Bonner: I’m coming.

Bobbie Jones: Yup.

Audience member off screen: While you guys are [inaudible], I want to let you know that the way you spoke [inaudible] was so disrespectful and so rude. She was so respectful; she’s so articulate; she has a beautiful voice, and I am so embarrassed that an  adult of our community would speak [inaudible] a child that way. [inaudible] deserves an apology from you personally.

Dr. Portia Bonner: So that shows the limited view because I was really speaking to the public. So if you took that personally, I apologize to you that you took that personally.

Audience member off screen: No. No. [inaudible] …a child that you spoke to in such a disrespectful way.

Dr. Portia Bonner: Kind of mirroring what you’re doing right now. So, Lucy – 

Audience member off screen: Yes, but I’m an adult and you’re an adult [inaudible]

Dr. Portia Bonner: [inaudible] Did she go out? 

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra: She went, yeah.

Dr. Portia Bonner: I have to close out stuff. 

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra:  Is there anyone else? 

Dr. Portis Bonner: Yeah, it’s on the agenda to share the 7.97%. 

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra: Actually, mine keeps saying it’s unstable. You want to try…

Dr. Potia Bonner: That one, the other – not that one, the other one, 7.97.

Video Time Stamp: 3:22:37

Bobbie Jones: While I’m waiting also for that document to be pulled up, I just want to say there was a lot of talk from the discussions: level service and level funded budgets. Just so that we’re all clear, level services would be keeping exactly what you have this year to continue into FY 25 with the increases. It wouldn’t be adding anything; it wouldn’t be subtracting anything. That’s not exactly what has happened because there were additions; there were subtractions. Level funded, which was also put out there a lot, is a budget that would be exactly the same amount as the FY4 budget, which would be a really hard scenario to take. So, I just want to clear that up a little bit.

Alright, now you have the document up. So, our first draft budget was at $42,805, 908. That was what we had from conversations with the ALT team and everybody that included some additions and some ESSER positions that we knew probably couldn’t be sustained. From there, we reduced it to $40,778,585 for our first view budget. That was a decrease of $2,027,323. What was reduced from there was in the central office or the district – total district – we reduced a superintendent/school committee clerk from 1.0 to 0.5. We reduced the registrar from 0.88 to 0.7, which was a one-day reduction. Our transportation contract, we were able to decrease the contract service with Durham by increasing our use of Transportation Revolving. We reduced the general fund support of the cafeteria with the onset of the free lunch that enabled us to reduce that $23,399, which is good but we will keep an eye on going into future years ‘cause this is new. Special education clerical, there was a reduction but it wasn’t a reduction in the position, it was a reduction in how the funding was. So the funding was all out of the local budget, but now it’s out of the local budget with a .2 out of the special education 240 grant. 

 Custodian uniform allowance, we were able to reduce just looking on the past use of that. Extraordinary maintenance – extraordinary maintenance contract, extraordinary maintenance supplies, we reduced those. That was in talks with our director . . . Not easy by any means, but when you’re in a pinch, you do that. Professional development stipends and professional development contract services were reduced. Again, not ideal, but that’s what we did.

Moving on to JFK. We reduced originally – now, let me bring you back up to the top. I’m sorry because that was the left side. Let’s go over to the right side because there’s changes from the first view budget to what we have currently talked about, which results in no change to the bottom line. The bottom line number is no change, but we have transportation drivers – that is reduced by $113,409 because that line was actually over-budgeted. I had a conversation with Tammy. We went through all the hours, we went through all the drivers, we went through everything. I found that I had put in summer, and some additional hours that didn’t need to be there. So that is what that reduction – there is actually no reduction in any drivers. It’s just that I had originally over-budgeted. Same with the crossing guards. In looking at the actual hours that they do and notating that there is one crossing guard that actually does the tax write-off program, I was able to reduce that line.

Translation services we could reduce. We had a new program that our EL director Lauren Berry found that would work and hopefully save us quite a bit of money, the $40,000. There’s a new program that’s a little bit under $6000, plus our ParentSquare and all these new initiatives that are happening – we should have savings there. I re-looked at the Transportation Revolving, and I added $10,000 to offset the costs. And then we had to increase a budget from the column changes that had come in by the $12,229. And that we didn’t know at the first look at the budget, ‘cause they have time, they have a deadline that they have to get those in by.

Now we’ll move down to the JFK. So JFK originally had a reduction of 0.5 PE and foreign language and a 504 coordinator, and then tech integration, which was a retirement, so that wouldn’t be a reduction in an employee; that would be a retirement. I’m not sure if that’s actual or not. And then,  going over again to the right side, you’ll see that we reduced a 1.0 math integrationist. That was in conversations with the schools, the administration of the schools, and that was so that they could keep the Northampton High School guidance counselor.

Moving down to the Bridge Street School, and you’ll find this in each of the elementary schools, we reduced a 1.0 para-professional, which is the first grade. That has been a cut that has been there for at least two years now that I know of. Reduced principal clerical to, like, 10 hours a week. I did it for 52 weeks because there’ll be additional costs due to contract language that if an existing person has to cover the office alone, there’s an extra stipend. Tiered support staff, that was reduced 1.0. There was an interventionist that we had added into the FY25 budget that was paid formerly from ESSER. That was reduced. Title I reading, we had increased in the first draft budget to 1.0, but going to the first view, we reduced it back to the 0.8. So it’s not a reduction. Again, that’s just we didn’t do the increase.

Jackson Street School, same. We had the clerical position. We had added an additional adjustment counselor from the draft to the first view. We didn’t put it in the first view, but it was not a person or position; it was an addition that we didn’t do. Um, we did reduce three classroom FTE teachers based on enrollment and in conjunction with the principal. And then the 1.0 para-professional – again, the first grade. That has been in question for two or three years.

Video Time Stamp: 3:32:16

Down to Leeds School, you’ll see the same. You got the – well, not the same, but the – originally we had two FTE sped teachers that we were going to reduce. We’ve changed that to 1.5, and even since that conversation, we’ve changed that to reducing it to just 1.0. To make up for that difference we are going to cut a 0.5 math interventionist. Then we have the classroom teacher that will be reduced. That’s, again, enrollment. Principal clerical, the first grade para-professional, and library 0.5 para-professional. That will be shared with Ryan Road. You’ll see that in the same –  Ryan Road will have the same. And then there is a retirement of that one position, so that won’t actually be a person, ultimately. 

Ryan Road, we have a para-professional, the first grade, the library 0.5 which I just spoke to at Leeds, principal clerical, which is across the board. I had an additional building sub that they had originally requested that I’m now removing, and one sped teacher from Ryan Road. But again, looking on the right side, there’ll be an addition based off  Josh Dixon’s recommendations of a 0.3 BCBA.

Down to the high school. Originally, we had reduced two FTE teachers. It was going to be one academic and one elective, but at the time, we didn’t know the enrollments or anything, and that’s still information that’s coming in now. We reduced the one guidance counselor and one adjustment counselor. That was a retirement, so that won’t be replaced. And then I had an assistive tech, which is the teacher of the Deaf and the Vision. That was listed – I had it in twice, so that was removed.

But – go again to the right side – I had missed out on one SPED teacher, so I had to add that back in. Due to Director Dixon’s information, we had to increase a 0.5 teacher. We increased a 0.5 BCBA, added a Dean of Students. We kept the guidance counselor, which if you go back to JFK, they reduced that math interventionist to keep the guidance counselor at Northampton High School.

A paraprofessional is not a reduction, but that’s a change in the funding, so I was able to change that para from the general fund to a SPED Tuition Revolving Account that we have. It doesn’t have much; it just has enough of a balance where we could do that without having future repercussions.

Then we’re going to reduce – 

Video Time Stamp: 3:36:16

Dr. Portia Bonner: Bobby, could you just pause for just a moment? Because I… I do want to say Lucy, I am so sorry. It was not my intent to respond – please know  it was not my intent to respond that way. I just needed to make sure that people – I did not intend to do that. And it was just said that I crushed this child, and I did not – I don’t do that.  So, I just want to apologize to her and I want to apologize to this group, because that was not my intent. It was really not my intent. All right, Bobby, I’m sorry. I just needed to say that and I wanted to openly apologize to her. 

Bobbie Jones: Right? We’re good? 

Dr. Portia Bonner: I don’t know, we’re okay. Go ahead.

Bobbie Jones:  I don’t think I heard some of that information, and I wasn’t sure what you were responding to. 

Dr. Portia Bonner: Oh.

Bobbie Jones: So then we’re reducing the 504 coordinator at the high school to a 0.5.

Some of the other additions that we had to the first view budget was the Title IX Coordinator, which we had reduced from the Director of Health Services position. I didn’t have in the draft; I had to add that in. The ESP stipends that were part of the negotiated contract I didn’t have budgeted in FY24. I had to add the $35,000 for that. That includes their stipend plus they get additional hours for working. And then we have a data coordinator that took on extra work between the transition of our Digital Literacy Coordinator and our IT department, having lost the IT director. 

So that is the changes that we had from the original draft to the first view budget that was presented in December. 

The other sheet that you’ll see when it’s pulled up is what we would need to do to meet the 4% that is in the fiscal stability plan of the city. It’s suggestions that we received from various people, various school committee members, and they’re suggestions. They’re not actual cuts; they’re just suggestions at this point.

But if you look at that document, and you look particularly at the top, to meet the 4% – and I’m going to go to the right side – without the 1.2 million which was the one-time funds, we would have to reduce our first view budget by $2,000,750. If we included the 1.2 – which we shouldn’t, because that was one-time funding – we would reduce by $1.5. So the total on this sheet comes down to the bottom line on line 36 of $3,083,113, which is more than we would need to reduce. But they include, on line nine, a salary freeze, which means no steps, no COLA, no anything. And that would be from everybody – from the superintendent all the way, that includes absolutely everybody – and we would save $1,899,369. There’s other options we could do. We could do, you know, no steps, we could do no COLA but get steps. I mean, there’s other things you can do. 

Then, as Dr. Bonner had mentioned previously, we went towards looking at things that didn’t affect, directly, the student classrooms. So it’s the tiered support and the academic supports in the elementary schools. JFK, the extracurricular stipends, staff stipends, extra per diem days adjustment counselors and guidance counselors. Again, this is all contractual language that would need to be negotiated, but those are things that we could look towards reducing.

At NHS, we would take back that counselor that we added in with the reduction of the math interventionist at JFK. We’d look towards the Innovations Pathways and Internship Coordinator. Again, the extracurricular stipends which, as I think one student had said so well, if you take that away, that won’t happen. So that is student-facing, but again, that was based on suggestions.

Staff stipends for department heads and extra per diem days. So yeah, guidance counselors get extra per diem days to work in the summer to do all the scheduling and all that good stuff, so that would take that away. And then Central Office would be – again, this is offered up not by all but by some – the School Committee stipends, School Committee supplies, and then we also have special ed teacher stipends. They get roughly about $1,000 on top of their annual salary if they are Special Education teachers. Again, a contractual item that would need to be discussed and reviewed, but those are some suggestions to get down to that 4%, if that’s what we needed to do.

And I think… just so you know, if we were to take, you know, every 1% to reduce from the first view budget would be about a $400,000 reduction. Um, to get us 7.97% without the 1.2 million one-time funding, we would have to further reduce the first view budget by a $1, 000, 443.

Emily Serafy-Cox:  Bobbie, can you say that first thing again?

Bobbie Jones:: So, from the first view budget, if we were to reduce from that point to go towards the – 

Emily Serafy-Cox: Oh I see

Bobbie Jones: 4%, yeah, 

Emily Serafy-Cox:  Each 1% is $400,000

Bobbie: Yep

Emily Serafy-Cox: Okay.

Bobbie Jones:  And that’s what I have. 

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra: Thanks, Bobbie.

Video Time Stamp: 3:45:10

Michael Stein: Thank you. I have some brief remarks prepared  – but before I give them, I just want to make some comments about what I see in the room tonight.  There are two things I’m feeling:  I’m feeling really inspired and really proud of all the students, staff and community who really value our educators and are really proud of the work they do every day and we’re seeing with our children who are here, speaking so eloquently and advocating for their schools. I’m really encouraged by it, and really heartened by it;  and I’m also really disappointed in this dynamic where it feels like people calling for a level service budget are not really being heard – they must be misled by misinformation, or if they only understood the cuts we’re talking about,  and the budgets, and the fiscal stability plan then they would gladly accept the cuts. When I think in reality, there is a clash of values and a clash of interpretation of a long history, and I want to acknowledge that.

The other thing I want to say is that the process of getting here is not great and I’d like to improve it. Part of the problem is that we have a charter with a strong mayor and we’re often treated like any other department, and we’re not. We also have a rule in the School Committee that no member of the School Committee directs the work of the district or anyone in the district without the approval of the body. At no point did we vote to say we want a 4% budget make it happen yet that was the instructions given, like any other department so we need to rethink this process –  because if I’m reading the room tonight right, I don’t think we’re going to go for either of these and we terrorized a lot of people and stressed a lot of people out, perhaps unnecessarily. So, we really need to talk about the process.

The other thing I want to say is it really upsets me that we were told that administrators or educators, these were the cuts they chose. I had to put in a freedom of information request  in order to get the actual requests from the Principals in the budgeting process and I can tell you from finally getting them, that none of them requested these cuts.  These administrators are non-union employees, who are in an insane position to not be able to say anything about this and I feel for them. I I just want to acknowledge that.  I also want to acknowledge that people and especially children who make mistakes in what they understand about a very complicated budget are asking for engagement, not to be corrected.

 I’ll try to get myself together for my remarks. I promise this is brief.

The austerity driving the two budget proposals in front of us this evening has had a demoralizing effect on our community. Rather than dwell on the real and disastrous consequences either of those budgets would produce, I want to take a moment to focus on the incredible energy in this room and in our community. 

We’ve heard loud and clear from our community that they value education and that they want our City’s budget to reflect that back. What they are asking for is not radical, it’s not controversial, it’s to hold on to what they currently have.  To be given the opportunity to keep swimming in place, okay? As a School Committee, we’re responsible for advocating for the needs of our students, and tonight we need to send a strong message that Northampton Public Schools needs to be one of the top priorities of our District’s budget, and our City’s budget, and its funding needs to reflect that. A level service budget will send that signal. I am happy to participate along with my colleagues from the Budget and Property subcommittee in joint conversations with the City Council Committee on Finance to identify appropriate areas for cuts in other areas of the city budget and the possibility of using Reserve funds in creative ways. This work will help us both identify and demonstrate what our values are and produce a budget that reflects them.

 I keep asking what expenditures in the city budget are more important than kids learning to read, or students with disabilities accessing education, or students packed into overcrowded classrooms? So far I have heard no argument  – only that we have a fiscal stability plan that we need to follow and it stipulates a framework for how we allocate resources. The limits on how much revenue we can generate are real, and prudent fiscal planning is wise. However following a budget framework on autopilot that ignores changes to our needs and is inflexible is not a recipe for success. We need to re-envision our plan, articulate our values, and appropriately fund our many needs in the most responsible way. Our problem isn’t only, or even mostly a revenue problem. Our problem is a political problem and the political choice to underinvest in  NPS over many years. We can make a different political choice tonight and have a real opportunity to do so. Our community is strong, our residents as talented as any community anywhere, and we deeply value education. I’m inspired and believe we can become an exceptional district, we just have to have the will to do so. I make a motion that we pass a level service budget of 42,805,908 dollars.

Emily Serafy-Cox:  I would second that motion.

Margaret Millier: Requests quieter alternatives to applause to allow hearing.  Can I make a respectful request? I am hard of hearing. Every time it erupts in applause I can’t hear what the member is saying so can I ask you to do things like this (jazz hands) to show your approval, because I can’t hear when you do that. Thank you.

Emily Serafy-Cox: I was not much inspired by my middle school or my high school.  They were fine I guess. I had a science teacher that was pretty fun. My understanding is that after he retired the middle school went downhill. In my high school I only remember a couple of teachers, the Women’s History teacher, the first out lesbian I ever had  as a teacher is one of the only ones I remember. My school was fairly well funded, so none of, almost none of what students and staff members talked about tonight existed in my high school.  So that tells me that the situation we have in Northampton is really remarkable because Madison, Wisconsin is not a place that is known for cutting at schools, that’s where I went to school.  I never heard as a kid about budget cuts and that sort of thing. I certainly wasn’t involved in it this way. 

As I’m reflecting about our decision tonight, at the very least I think we owe it to our community who has overwhelmingly reached out to us, asking for services to continue, and telling us that we are at the bare bones. Member Agna you said it yourself in the last meeting – we are down to the bone, so that’s why I seconded this motion. I think that we deserve to give it a vote for our community.  

I have many things to say about the budget and process and so forth,  before I pass it to other members because I want to let other members speak, especially speak to the motion.  I want to give a special shout out to Winston Campell, the fourth grader at Bridge Street, who walks with me to his school every Monday morning on the Walking School Bus at Bridge Street School. He has decided that he is going to enter into budget and finance when he grows up, a kid after my own heart.  I was crying earlier. I’m going to stop before I start crying again. Thank you.

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Holly Ghazey: We’ve heard loud and clear from the community about the need for level funding, and I think that it is incumbent upon us to present this issue to the city council so that it can be heard and discussed by the entire community.   I would ask that everybody viewing this meeting and everybody participating go home and in the next little time talk to all the people that you know, your neighbors and acquaintances, who do not have children in the schools and make sure that they understand why we are doing this, why we are doing, because there will be pushback. Basically, if this goes through, it’s going to be cutting of lots of other departments citywide unless we can throw a Hail Mary and get Smith to participate in some kind of Pilot program where they pay in lieu of property taxes on a regular basis. They have like $500,000 in property that is – they’re nonprofits so they’re not taxed, but they also have two billion in endowments. 

I know that they, I have heard that they have like a 4% budget Gap this year, but that’s because they just want to live on their interest. I also think that it is incumbent upon us when we make these recommendations, if I make this recommendation, if we were to make this recommendation, that we as a committee need to immediately start working proactively on figuring out ways to reconfigure and consolidate our schools to more efficiently use our resources, our teachers, and that may be closing one or two elementary schools so that you don’t have six classes at Jackson Street at 50% of their students at 27 or 28 before you even get move-ins. I think that we need to immediately apply to the MSRB, I think I’ve got that right, of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, who is the board that approves and funds school building, like what Amherst is getting, what Easthampton got. It’s a long process, but I think we should get our name in there immediately because for me, I envision something like having two K to 8 campuses that are new and energy efficient, and you know that we can more easily balance classrooms.

 I think we should have an override. I do think that if it comes down to class size versus the Arts, that we should keep the Arts, because they provide such an enriching part to so many students, as we have seen here tonight by the very enthusiastic theater groups. I just can’t see cutting ESPs. I can’t. I’ve read some compelling letters about BCBAs who are the people who help intervene when kids just behaviorally can’t, you know, are so stressed out that they’re losing it. I also think that our student intervention staff, these are some of the ones that were listed in the additional cuts we’d have to go from the 8% to the 4% budget, and those that short-term focus, you know, they take students for six weeks that are sort of not getting it and are really failing in the classroom. They give them six weeks of intensive work and often they can return them to the class with those students having caught up and not having to fall further and further behind until we’re facing a special education referral to get support for that student. I also love restorative practices, so those are the things that I think. Thank you.

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Gwen Agna: I’’ve given a couple of speeches already in the last couple of meetings that I appreciated that Dr. Bonner included one of them in her newsletter, so I don’t think I need to repeat the kinds of things that I said. 

I just have a few comments tonight. I wanted to first really appreciate the students in Northampton schools. I have a special feeling about them because some of them I was their principal, but  many of them I wasn’t the principal, and I really have had such great conversations over the last few weeks at different opportunities to do that.  I’ve really appreciated your willingness to talk and to engage and to try to understand different perspectives. I think that that is a real mark of a good education, and I do think it’s something that we should be proud of in Northampton, that we’ve had students who have developed this kind of critical thinking and perspective-taking, and that you’re very, very kind as well. So, thank you very much. I’ve also appreciated some of the letters that we’ve received in email. I know the pain, I know the feelings that families have. As our former superintendent said one time at a convocation, he said, “These are your babies,” and these are the people who you have to advocate for, and these are the children. And that’s so important to me to keep in mind. 

I understand the reality of the city finances. I happen to see how Director Nardi has laid it out, and I think I understand it and accept it that we are in a situation that’s very difficult. I don’t see how we can continue to do business as usual in our schools. This isn’t new to us, this has happened before, and it’s going to continue to happen if we don’t do something differently. 

And I think that if we are to ask the City Council to join us in understanding how we’re going to make our schools the schools we want to be, we have to pledge to the city that we’re going to look at our schools a little differently and our ways of giving education. I think we need to engage in the strategic plan and have a vision and mission for our children that I think will include further lobbying for more funding from the state, reimagining schools to encourage more students and families to come and enroll. 

We need to support the initiatives for more affordable housing. It’s a huge problem for Northampton, and I think that that’s keeping many of our families away or has driven many of our families away.  I do agree that we do need to look at whether we should consolidate schools.  I don’t know what that means at this point, I don’t have a complete vision for that, but I would like to speak to others who are more experts in the field. We have somebody who I know in our community who’s looked at school designs and is working in East Longmeadow right now. So I think we have a lot of resources in our community for how to reimagine schools or consolidate them – including our city buildings too, because we have a climate mandate and in order to meet that mandate, we’re going to have to do something differently. I swore to, on a – it wasn’t a Bible, I think; but  I swore to support the students the children of Northampton, it’s part of our code of ethics and school committees, that I realized that my primary responsibility is to the children. I valued that, I valued it as an educator and I value it now, and I think we are going to have to ask the city council to help us with this.

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Margaret Miller: First of all could echo a lot of what Member Agna and Member Ghazey have said. I am fully aware of the financial constraints that the city is dealing with, and I want to say that I really appreciate all the work that the Superintendent and our Business Manager have put into working on these budgets.  However, I have to say that I joined the school committee because I have a deep historic value for public education, and I really need our community to fund public education for our students. I so appreciate every single comment made by students and staff. I have read every single letter that’s been sent to us, every email. I’ve been up at night. This has been torture. I have to say that the reason I joined the school committee is to protect schools.

As Member Serafy-Cox talked about her history, theater and music saved me in high school, they were my safe space. I can’t even imagine cutting that. Despite my concerns about our financial constraints, I really am very committed to – we do need to really look in the strategic planning at how we can re-envision some of the things in the schools so that we can reduce the costs, including possibly closing elementary schools and consolidating. But at this juncture, I cannot vote for this budget, and I need to turn to the City Council to help us resolve this issue. That’s where I am.

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Aline Davis: Again, several things that have been said I have word for word written down myself. So I’ll just go through them.  One of them is, thank you very much for your comments tonight, for your emails, for weeks, exactly as Member Miller said. I have read every one repeatedly, I’ve highlighted, I’ve circled, I’ve wrote notes to myself, this is the same as that one, these are common themes, all of that.  I would venture to say we all have done that, but I don’t want to put words in our mouth, but I bet I’m right. 

The first bullet I have on here for my focus is – focus on the students. We are advocates for the students, but something that has been on my mind is we are also part of a larger community. We have our role, very important, but we are part of a whole city, which is very complex. In my time on the school committee, I’ve increasingly understood more and more how complex it is. So I just want to acknowledge that I’m not sure where it gets me, but it’s not as tidy, not very tidy at all. Very important to me, I have no control over this, I don’t want to pit the schools against other departments.  Firefighters are important, I think that’s important, I think the taking care of houseless people is important, I think that there’s a lot that’s important. But my job here that I said I wanted to do was on the school committee, so I get that that has to be my particular focus. That in mind, I also don’t want to pit arts against reading, I don’t want to pit arts against math or science. Again, easier said than done, but all my best friends were the thespians in school, but I also, you know, I was a great reader and I loved my first-grade; ike all of that is super important. I’m very concerned about any Special Education funding cuts. Very important, and that’s also a legal thing. The last thing I want to say…second to last thing, the must-do things differently, whether it’s closing the schools, the multi-age classrooms, the thinking outside the box,  seems like imperative – have to have to do that. 

So this is the last thing.  Member Stein – I only see dedicated, dedicated people on this School Committee who love children – and are working very hard. There is no clash of values here at all. You are heard, you have been heard, period. It’s very important to me that you understand that. Nobody is ignoring your thoughts, your concerns. Please know that I’m not only speaking for myself, I am positive, positive that Member Stein is not the only one who loves you. Thank you.

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Ann Hennessey: I do want to say a few things, and I love the  comments, and everyone’s been reading a lot.  I support sending this back to the City Council, and I know that that’s really hard for people, but I do think this is a community discussion around what trade-offs we have to make.  I’m going to try not to repeat, but I know I will a little bit, and while I loved all the students, I really do and what you said, I was actually listening to the students who weren’t here because as Ezekiel Baskin, one of our speakers said, his theater teacher, I think that’s what he said, saved his life, and I think I could name teachers and counselors at our schools who saved some kids’ lives that I know. 

So like Jess R, Miss Jenny Jen, Ed Stone, you know, these are people who had and continue to have such an impact on our students’ lives, and those kids aren’t as unbelievable as the student council in terms of confidence and agency and the theater group.  My gosh, you’re so wonderful.   So I kept thinking about those kids who aren’t here and how I worry about this budget.  I really value tiered support specialists.  They are . . I’m a special ed teacher and an economics teacher . . .  they’re crucial.  I’m here for the students.  With that said, the contract is an agreement we’ve made with our educators, and we have to really honor that.  So that’s something that I just want to put out there.   

Long run, short run, again, I said I teach economics. I think we could fix some things in the short run in our community after we have a hard discussion, like a bond rating, maybe not really short run, but to me it’s easier to fix that than some of the devastating effects of these cuts on our elementary, middle, and high school students.   I know a lot of people in the community, and I’ve gotten a lot of letters, don’t support an override.  That’s scary to me because I think we’re going to need it.  And –  I can’t remember his first name – but Mr. Jersky said, we need –  and as many people here said – we need to participate in, actively as a community (and I mean people who live here, people who teach here, people who work here)  in a long-term strategy session because  we have unbelievable human capital that our paraeducators, our teachers, our counselors are amazing.  I I think we have the potential to have unbelievable schools, more unbelievable schools. 

If we think out of the box, this is a place to do it.  Obviously, we’re in a systems failure. There are 212 communities in the Commonwealth who are in similar situations.  We  could be a leader, and I think we could be, we should be, and I think we have it.  So, I support this going back to the city council at a level-funded level.

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Kerry LaBounty: First, I wanted to say thank you for all the comments. I really, really appreciated them. And I saw the students with their hands shaking and their voices shaking, and I wanted to say, though your voice be shaking, you spoke your truth.  So I really appreciate that because that’s not easy to do.  I just wanted to say I see you.  And I want to thank Member Stein for just making the motion so that we didn’t do this.  I appreciate that, so thank you.

I also wanted to say I really appreciated, I think it’s Ms Hidalgo (I think I pronounced that right).  She had a lot of ideas about possibilities of things we might have to consider, things we need to think about from regionalizing to things in the classroom.  She really had some good ideas, and I want to have that conversation.  I want us to think about what do we need to do differently to make this work, because I think we can.  We need to do something in the short term, and that’s not easy, and I totally appreciate the work that the superintendent and Bobby have done because they’ve  done what we’ve asked them to do.  So, you know, I appreciate that.  But I also feel it’s a bigger conversation, and so I too support it going back to the City Council.  

I just wanted to say thank you to my peers for talking this over with us.  And it actually isn’t a difficult decision for me because I feel like it’s due process.  It’s what we’re supposed to do as a School Committee, is advocate for the best budget we can.  We may not get it, but that’s our job.   So thank you.

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Karen Foster-Cannon: Thank you to my colleagues and to all of you who are here tonight. Member Davis, you said sort of what I was thinking. So many of you know I was on City Council for four years before coming over to School Committee, and one of the most painful experiences I always have found is this process where people think they’re not being heard when they are, and that’s really hard. We hear you. I’ve read all the emails, I’ve heard all of your public comments. We are listening. Sometimes that translates, it can translate to decisions being made that people didn’t advocate for, but of course, there are so many voices that we’re listening to.

The first thing I do want to say is that this process, and I don’t mean here in Northampton with this body, I mean this process, the way the schools are funded, the way we go through this every year, it stinks. Okay? We know this, we’ve all been here. I remember as a student advocating to keep music in the elementary schools, keep the buses within two miles, all of those things. That was in the ’80s that that started.

The other thing I want to say and one of the things that is difficult about this is the transition, right? Tonight was basically a love letter to the Northampton schools, that was a beautiful thing. I think that speaks a lot to our students, our ESPs, our teachers, our administrators, and the city that’s supporting our schools, that’s pretty incredible. It’s a very difficult mental switch to go from that to the numbers in front of us, and I just want to acknowledge that that’s really tough, and here we are in this position, and that’s a really, really hard switch.

The other thing I want to say about this is the human impact on all of this is not lost on me. So I actually used to teach, I was a high school teacher in 2001, and as we were talking about the notification of teachers learning that their job may not be funded, that’s actually why I don’t teach anymore. So I got that notice, and that was really unsettling, and I was very young. I remember some of the grizzled teachers were like, “Oh yeah, that happens every year here in the city.” It was not Northampton, it was a different city. “Oh, that happens every year, it’s okay, they’ll pass the budget and you’ll get rehired.” And that’s true, I was rehired for the next year, but that’s really unsettling.

So this human impact, as we’re looking down a spreadsheet, and we’ve talked about that, but it’s the students, it’s the teachers, it’s everybody in the building, and I really hear that and just want to acknowledge just how difficult these conversations are.

The other thing that I did want to say is I understand the charge of the School Committee – here we are, looking at students first, schools first, and that is a guiding principle for all of us. Because I’m bringing the perspective of having served on City Council, the understanding of the child first, which is ever so slightly different than the student first. So I have had the experience of talking with people who don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods because there aren’t crosswalks, there are speeding cars. There is a child that I’m particularly thinking of who is unable, due to a disability, to leave his house and cross the street where he lives. That’s infrastructure money, and that’s what’s so painful about these conversations is this is all coming from the same wallet, right? So we’re thinking about the student first, the child first, and the city first, and all of these things, the arts department, that matters. If your crosswalk is painted, and as a middle schooler, you can walk into Florence Center on sidewalks that are in good condition and hang out with your friends after school. All of these things are part of the life experience of children in our community, and I think these things all really matter.

The other perspective I bring –  is having served on City Council for four years, I did not see mismanaged fluff, and I’m not saying that anybody here is saying that there is. What I saw was department heads who were continually as creative as they could, reducing expenses, trying to meet the needs of our city. And it’s everywhere, and as we’ve mentioned, it is structural. Proposition 2 and a half, it’s BS, right? It’s not fair. It holds cities and towns to prolonging infrastructure improvements. It holds us to underfunding our schools. It holds us back from raising the revenue we need to fund our city services. It’s unfair, it’s not right, it’s immoral. It’s also immoral that we are funding our schools on local property tax. That’s not right. All of these things, and I tell you, if we want to get on a bus and go to the state house, I am there for that, okay? I will be there, actually in a couple of weeks. I know we’ve done it, we need to keep doing it, and I am there to do whatever I can to support our schools.

That is to say, I understand the energy and the desire to bring this conversation back to City Council. I would not support that. I just, to explain, I won’t support that with the higher budget that is a motion right now. I would support it with a different budget that is above 4% increase. So I just want to explain my vote, and in no way does that mean nobody’s being heard, or that I don’t value the kids, or I don’t value education. I’m looking at the childhood experience of Northampton in a little bit bigger lens, that’s all.

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Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra: I’ll just speak since I’m the last one who hasn’t.   First, I want to thank the students that came to City Hall yesterday, a bunch of you are still here.  I was glad that I got to see you in the morning. I’m also just so grateful to all the students that came back after 2:00pm for a discussion, and I thank you all for being part of that discussion, and part of this discussion. 

I’m just very inspired by how much you care and I especially appreciated hearing the ideas that you shared with me and also appreciated how open you were to listening as well as sharing.  I greatly respect and appreciate everyone who’s contacted us and shared their thoughts and their concerns and spoken up here, and I appreciate that you all are doing your job.

You know, I’m just going to repeat what I said one day shy of exactly two years ago at this budget meeting because this situation we’re in is exactly what I feared would happen when we created deficits we could not fill with recurring funds.  So I said, “I can’t, in good conscience, support something that I don’t know is sustainable.  It would be irresponsible and I have a responsibility to the students at the district and the City of Northampton, and I cannot support something that I know will create a situation that undoes years of work  to stabilize the school budget and to create security for the people who work for the schools and City, and the needed services for the people and the students of Northampton.

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Michael Stein: I was going to make an amendment to my motion, but I’m not going to screw anything up, so I’m not going to do it, but I’m going to tell you what my amendment would be. This is inspired by all of my colleagues’ remarks and their willingness to really think deeply and engage deeply with the strategic planning process in collaboration with the city, which I think is great. If anything, if this jolts us to do that, I think that’s good.

What I would want to add, but I’m not going to, is that the current strategic planning process we have is inadequate to do the work we just talked about.  That’s the opportunity and the venue that we have in front of us, so I think we need to make some amendments to that process. Currently, there are very few people on it, the School Committee is really not involved, large segments of the community are not involved, large segments of the staff. All of the things that everyone is saying about engaging with these ideas, I want to do. So let’s re-envision how we’re doing the strategic planning process and do the work that we all said we want to do. I’m not going to add it to the motion. If someone else wants to, that’s fine, but we got to do that. I want to do the work.

If we’re going to talk about  – there’s a lot of possibilities if we were to consolidate a school, or investigate it, that would take off millions of dollars in Capital Improvements that were just up for debate city council the other day. We’re investing millions of dollars in many schools with no plan, and we can make different choices, and we should have a holistic conversation about that. But that’s not what’s happening with the current process because none of us are involved – and none of these folks are involved.

The only involvement we have had is a very poorly responded-to survey. I think it was 146 caregivers responded, and the prompts were, sort of speculative paragraph fiction about what we envisioned – which is a great exercise, and one that we all did together in the Fall, members that were here, but it’s not a great survey, and I don’t know what we do with that data. We need to get more serious about this and I hope we can. Thank you.

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Emily Serafy-Cox: I really appreciate that many of the things that were on my list to say have already been said, so I’ve crossed those off. I will bring up again my request for expanding multi-year budget planning. By expanding, I mean when we vote on a budget, we can only vote on that one year’s budget, that’s the vote that we make. But to have the multi-year projections along with that, I assume that our administrators are doing that. I know I do that for my own nonprofit that has a budget, a tiny fraction of this amount, so I imagine that our administrators are doing that to integrate it into our planning.

I’ve talked about investments in communications, the kind of recruitment idea. I felt so much energy from especially caregivers this evening around wanting to make sure that other people know about our schools. If we are going to be continuing the kind of, what did I call it,  special situation that this education system that we’ve created is special, if we’re going to be able to continue that having students in it, it’s going to be critical for that. I would see this as a call to action for our entire Community around recruitment. We’ve been creating these amazing, basically recruitment videos, you saw one tonight from Ryan Road that makes me want to go to that school. I want to have Forest Fridays. I should just go out in the forest on Fridays….to not just think of this as  something that an administrator has to spend more of their time doing, but, parent volunteer committees can do this sort of thing. I actually organized one such committee as this when I was a parent at my daughter’s kindergarten when we lived in San Diego, California. Let me tell you, Prop 13 is even worse than prop two and a half, so there’s a reason why I don’t live in California anymore.

Along the lines of bringing more resources into the district, I remember several years ago, Superintendent Provost talking about a grant writing position and it was actually added to the budget. I don’t remember what happened off the top of my head. I just thought of it tonight, but that’s one thing that I wanted to mention.

We’ve been talking so much about how this is a systemic issue. Obviously, this is not just an issue that the city of Northampton can solve on its own. This is a state and federal issue. If we as a school committee and as a school community are going to be a part of that solution, our school committee meetings can be opportunities for us to organize ourselves and to organize our community to build the power that is needed to really shift that, both for the state and potentially Federal.

We have a liaison, for legislative work. I think it shouldn’t just be incumbent upon one member to do that, right? It’s, it’s all of our work together, but the key word there is together. We can’t do it just oh, I call up Jo Comeford and say, Hey, you know, we need more funding. Like it’s got to be organized. We need messaging. We need to work together on what it is that we’re asking for, and continually remind people to do it. Can you tell that I’m a community organizer in my professional life?

The federal issue can’t be understated here – not because the feds are going to magically somehow fund education, because they’re probably not. Our state is facing some major financial headwinds as well. Some people call it the migrant crisis. I think that’s a ridiculous term that – people are not a crisis, this is a work visa crisis. People need work visas, and it has cost our state a billion dollars in this fiscal year so far-  in supporting people who don’t yet have work visas.

So the idea that in order to support public education, we need to pressure our federal government to get its act together on processing people for work visas? I recognize this sounds a little far-fetched, but there is a direct line because that $1 billion this fiscal year that our state has spent on people who are not allowed to work, because we won’t as a government process them quickly enough? That is is equal to the entire 7-year implementation of the student Opportunity Act. So, we’re talking about an amazing amount of money. 

Those are all of the things I had to say. I really appreciate all of you up here – clearly it’s getting late at night. I’m not getting any more eloquent, okay.

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra: Are there any further comments?  Okay, seeing none, if you’re ready… 

Member Foster-Cannon? No. 

Member Serafy-Cox?  Yes. 

Member Stein? Yes. 

Member Hennessey?  Yes. 

Member Miller? Yes

Member LaBounty? Yes. 

Member Agna?  Yes. 

Member Davis?  Yes. 

Mayor Sciarra? Abstain. 

Member Ghazy? Yes.