On Education

Our public schools are the essential incubators of what Northampton will be over the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years. More than any politician or city planning, public schools do the most to grow and protect our future. Public schools raise our children and make it possible for parents to work in the world. Public schools are vital community meeting spaces at a time when those are increasingly important, for our sanity and our safety, and alarmingly rare, in the real world and on the internet. Underfunding our schools is a profound failure in priorities. Mayor Sciarra’s budgeting minutiae and excuses are beside the point. We have to at least give our incredible teachers, paras, and staff what they say they need, and then discuss what more they want and what we can do to make the schools even better, for a public school system we can all be proud of. Underfunding our schools balances the budget on the backs of those who can bear it the least. It’s unconscionable and it’s unacceptable, and if you elect me, it will end.

Consolidation of our understaffed schools should be an obvious non-starter, as is assigning certain children to certain schools based on special needs. Yet both ideas are being seriously floated by members of this administration and its allies as the next steps in streamlining our already short-shrifted school system. Either would lead to slim savings at best and profound disruptions at least, and these suggestions reveal a deep misunderstanding about the function and value of a public school system. Additionally, the constant under-resourcing of our schools severely damages their standing when they are already competing against charters and private schools. In a progressive community, we should be discussing places to make our public schools even better, not areas where we can skim off a little cash.

A vote for me is a vote for fully funding the public schools, and then some. Let’s make Northampton even better by investing where we know it will pay off the most: in our children.