“For almost two decades, elected officials have told parents in Northampton some variation of ‘our hands are tied,’ (are they really?) and ‘the state needs to change their funding’ (true, but if it hasn’t happened after almost 20 years of lobbying, do we really believe that the Legislature will suddenly have an epiphany?)”
Read Julie Asbornsen’s Guest Column here:
https://www.gazettenet.com/Guest-columnist-Asbornsen-55773177
June 27, 2024
Thank you to Julie Asbornsen for outlining a history of cuts over the last 15 years.
My understanding of previous cuts was that a massive amount of paraprofessional positions were cut due to the creation of a WINS model for inclusion several years ago. In place of paraprofessionals, more licensed special education teachers were hired. But, the city did not include this amount of increased teacher salaries into the planning budget – they used “one-time” funds and different allocations to pay for this increase in positions and salaries.
Later, the paraprofessional positions then needed to be restored due to safety issues with students requiring increased support in classrooms. Since then, the city budget has required increasing positions and eliminating positions in a disorganized way, while also not taking the time to truly plan a budget that is based on what the schools need now.
Thanks, Julie. Great perspective on the unfortunate approach to funding the schools over the years by Northampton. It’s way past time to make funding the public schools the most important priority of the budgeting process. Live up to the rhetoric about what makes Northampton special. We owe it to the kids (who keep coming).
We have been defunding our schools for so long, so I am really glad that the community is finally talking about why. The answer is our financial policies that prioritize cash accumulation over providing services. The Fiscal Stability Plan and overrides are actually causing instability because of the way they are executed. Hamp has known this for a long time, but it’s only this year that progressives are starting to see that not all taxes are used for progressive values. It takes time to understand policies and what effects they have on a city, and in our case it’s taken over a decade. But I’m so glad we are having the conversation now, because it means we can change things. The first step is changing how we vote. We really have to pay closer attention to who we put in office and what they actually intend to accomplish. It’s time to break the cycle of endlessly funding bad policy.
I deeply appreciate any historical perspective that can help me understand what happened with school funding in our city. Past op eds by former Mayor Narkewicz and former City Councilor Bill Dwight offered only a “streamlined” history that mostly justified the “Stability Fund,” and other choices they made.
I’m grateful to Julie Asbornsen for starting to fill in the picture. We need this part of our history filled in by people who are concerned with all the relevant facts and not with reputation polishing.
I’m thankful to Julie for documenting the historical ongoing perspective of underfunding in our public schools, providing actual, year-by-year examples. While the specific examples change, the general optics remain the same year to year – symbolizing the belief that the quality of education of children in our public schools is not prioritized, and anything over the bare-bones minimum can and will be sacrificed at the altar of city spending priorities that are viewed as more important (just about anything!). Due to current politics, and under the guise of ‘freedom of choice’, this same view towards public school funding is now occurring regularly at both the state and national levels, favoring education in private schools, charter schools and ‘vouchers’. This is a sad statement about the state of our democracy.
161 students currently at JFK are two or more grade levels behind in math and 145 are two or more grade levels behind in reading. Several others anre one grade behind. Almost all of the interventionist are gone. Within the last five years they have cuts 7 interventionists from the middle school. The Mayor is turning her back on these kids and families.
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