Support Our Schools Questionnaire

10. Why do you want our endorsement?

SOS is my friends and neighbors. I’ve argued alongside you in front of City Council and stood alongside you in front of City Hall. You fight to make my life easier, to make my children’s richer, to make this city better at the most fundamental level. You saved Bridge Street School’s garden, which my daughter proudly pulls me through the fence to see on our walk home from school. Unlike our current government, SOS understands how monumental a budget line that is to both kids and parents—and at the end of the day, to our community, our city, our schools, and the planet. What you and I understand, and what so many are not yet clued into, is that austerity towards our public schools is wholly unnecessary. We know that this Mayor has a capital projects budget in the millions that is—unusually—approved whole-hog and months before the operating budget is even drafted. Under me, that would change. We need a budget process that prioritizes fulfilling our legal and moral obligations first and foremost, one that believes public schools and investments in the future are one and the same. I believe I can win this election, because I know that Northampton overwhelmingly agrees with these core human values and that this Mayor is at odds with the overwhelming consensus, shielded behind misleading numbers and an insufficient local news media. I am in this race because I believe our winning coalition is enormous and awesome, but it needs a unified forward charge at the heart of this uncaring administration and their corrupt ideology. In this proudly progressive city, any discussion about public school funding should treat the School Committee’s recommendation as a floor, not a ceiling, to deliberations. I want to make our schools even better than they already are and I want to talk to the people who spend every day in them to find out exactly how to do that. I would be honored if you endorsed and joined me to oust this ever-oppositional administration from City Hall and end its wrongheaded thinking on our public schools once and for all.

9. What would a People’s Budget look like in Northampton, and what would you do to implement it?

We currently have two budgets: the capital projects budget and the operations budget. For me, a People’s Budget consists almost entirely of the latter. The Mayor’s behavior towards public schools is bizarre and reprehensible, but it is far from unique; core public services like snow removal, road repairs, and the Fire Department are all unfunded, and DPW can’t fill essential vacancies and fails to spend even the money they’re allotted, to the detriment of Northampton’s most vulnerable in particular. The things the people of this city say they need are the things this city needs to be spending its money on. When the city cannot meet the union requests of DPW but spends millions on outside consultants, it is clear the budget is not for the people. My desire to create exactly that would also inform how I would seek passage of my budget. Unlike the current regime, I would expect and encourage feedback and amendments from an engaged and empowered City Council and an informed and included public. A city budget is for the people of the city and it is doomed if it is not tested against the will of the people it is supposed to serve.

8. How do you plan to balance the various needs of the city?

I have been on the campaign trail for about a month now and I have talked to a lot of people, mostly about what they need from the city, and way too often about how they aren’t getting it. Basic social services have taken a clear back seat to capital projects and city planning. The DPW is so underfunded they can’t fill union jobs or school-side potholes. I have heard from people who got serious injuries on uncleared ice and snow this winter, while the city spent a third less on removal than the year before. Every year, the budget goes after our already-scrappy school system with a scalpel to slice off beloved programs and people—so much so that they are literally breaking the law. The Fire Department is an engine short. The city’s revenues are up; this is not a budget issue, it’s a priorities issue. I see City Hall pitting Northamptonians against each other, from the Yes/No signs to the schools versus seniors debates, but it is a misdirection from the Mayor’s capital projects fund and her mismanagement of the city’s finances. I would spend the people’s money on the people, first by funding our basic services—schools included—at an adequate level to function, as defined not by me but by the people who deliver those essential services. I am devoted to reasserting the separation of powers and re-empowering our legislature as defined by the charter: the nine members of the City Council should be the conduit for change, as prescribed by their constituents, including in the expansion or reduction of social services. I believe a Mayor’s role, and by extension City Hall’s role, is to enforce the laws that enshrine people’s rights; the idea that a Mayor’s budget would violate IEP protections rather than enforce them is incompatible with how I understand, and would exercise, that power.

7. We’ve been told that there are not enough financial resources in Northampton to provide for all the needs of our public schools and students. What steps would you take to meet the needs of the schools as defined by the experts on the School Committee to achieve your vision?

If elected, I promise that you will no longer be told that there are not enough financial resources in Northampton to provide for the needs of our public schools and students. That’s absurd and cruel and I can’t believe that this Mayor, City Hall, and City Council have had the audacity to say it. A basic audit of a single office’s expenditures staunched some of the bleeding this year, yet this Mayor and most of the City Council are consistently resistant to an audit of any kind, despite growing calls from the public for financial oversight and transparency. The amount that the School Committee asks for is, to my mind, the absolute lowest that our funding should go. They are not a unanimous body by any means, and even what we call the Strong Budget is a conservative ask. Those of us on the outside of City Hall trying to exercise the slightest expression of our constitutional rights have been trained to expect little and ask for less and less under the narrowest hope of gaining access to the (supposedly democratic) decision-making process. It has gotten us nowhere. I would change that on day one, and sooner if I can.

I’m really excited about the School Committee elections this year. I think it could be a real body for change, for introspection, for growth in our public school system, and I would like to instill a culture in City Hall where the School Committee simply sets the budget for the schools they oversee and represent. At the very least, they should set the very least we can give. Treating ambitious, expensive construction projects as a budget priority over, or in conflict with, our children’s and teachers’ basic needs is unnecessary. If we paid DPW employees what we’ve paid planning consultants the last four years, that department would be gangbusters and those workers would at last earn what they deserve for the essential work that they do. 

6. What is your overall vision for the Northampton Public Schools?

I want our schools to feel as if they can grow rather than simply survive a yearly battle with the Mayor’s pruning shears. I want to invest in programs that are popular; I want to promote staff members that are successful; I want students to be able to dream up classes they would like to take and for our schools to have the capacity to offer them. I say “overfund” the schools in my campaign literature for two reasons: 1. I want to move the Overton Window to the left and leave the “what can we cut” conversations behind, and 2. I’m sure there are folks working or going to our public schools who need more from us. I went to public school. Even under friendly administrations, teachers still buy their supplies. I’m a dad, and I know kid’s art supplies aren’t cheap, burn out fast, and keep getting more expensive. I would hope to bring an end to that kind of treatment of our teaching staff, a huge public employee base for our city. As Mayor, I would trust our School Committee, but I would also talk to teachers and staff. I know a lot of them need more, and I know a lot of them have great ideas about how to improve their schools. I would look to them first and foremost to find out how our schools are doing and where they could be heading.

5. How do you understand issues of social/economic/racial justice present in Northampton schools and throughout our community, and what steps would you take to make our community and schools reflect our commitment to social justice?

When we talk about slimming the budget on public programs, what we’re really talking about is making life more impossible for those most dependent on them. For someone who has never felt sick wondering how you are going to pay rent or faced down having to make a day’s food last for three, or being prescribed necessary medicine you simply can’t pay for, maybe it is possible to not see how evil that kind of governance is. I get that many people are just getting by and that reducing any part of the safety net will have devastating repercussions on their lives. I am generally proud of the way our city resources unhoused residents, but I would also like to make sure the city’s social programs are truly supportive for all who need them. I am a white cis man married to a woman, so I would bring in perspectives of residents who have firsthand experience of offensive and discriminatory interactions. I have friends who had just never said anything until recently because… people don’t talk about it. A policing program of pulling people over based on racially stereotyping car models as an improvement over their former procedure! A reparations committee half-populated by anti-reparations advocates! A “Settled In” sign on the front of City Hall! My government would have a commitment to racial, social, and economic justice. I think the vast majority of this city shares these values, especially the rising generations, and an investment of time, energy, and funding is long overdue to those who have been marginalized the most and to those who rely on it more than the rest of us. At the core of this question is the executive branch’s responsibility to enforce the laws and protections people count on and have fought hard to enact—and citizens having access to the process. I believe deeply in both.

4. What do you view as the two (2) biggest challenges in Northampton and what are three (3) specific things you would do to remedy them?

The two biggest challenges in Northampton today are an uncaring and inaccessible city government and an overzealous and underregulated planning department. I hear echoes of each in almost every conversation I have had with residents. The two combined create any number of the city’s now-dire issues, not the least of which are the artificial austerity budgets that squeeze our schools and short-shrift our workers. It’s easy to not know about these issues within our city governance, and many residents I talk to are just hearing about the monumental mismanagement of this city. Once you find out, though, you can’t help but be activated by it, because we all love this place.

In June, concerned that no one was going to take on this Mayor in a way that would hold her accountable for these core administrative issues and indefensible decisions and win with a mandate to change how City Hall operates, I pulled papers to run. Every day, I am working harder than I have ever worked to make sure that we oust this administration, take back the council, and fill the school board. 

First, I would deprioritize the capital projects budget and fold it into normal budget proceedings alongside essential operational costs and investments and away from its uniquely limited oversight. Through that action, I hope that my administration and future Mayors would obey a more ethical and needs-focused budget allocation process.

Second, I would reassert the separation of powers that is explicitly stressed in the city charter and leave the legislating to the City Council—and sit unobtrusively in the back or even leave during their deliberations unless called upon—while also giving them the tools and resources any layperson or government employee needs to begin exercising oversight and drafting productive legislation, an ability that our current council lacks, by their own admission.

Third, I would answer the phone. I would listen to anyone who reached out for help and I would make sure my office and departments were all doing the same. When your primary focus as an executive branch is preserving the city and protecting its people, people calling in to report road damage or domestic abuse are doing the government’s job and should be both encouraged to call and encouraged by what their call achieves. It would be my primary focus to repair and rebuild the essential feedback loop with the public that this Mayor has abandoned completely, to the undeniable detriment of the city.

3. How will you support the right of workers to organize?

I believe in protest. It is a core constitutional right and it is one of the few tools of the oppressed against the powerful. Strikes are one of the best forms of protest because they have clearly outlined goals and maximized leverage, avoiding the pratfall of so many modern movements that feel like dwindling marches to nowhere. I love collective action. I love unions. I would do everything to protect that vital, inalienable tool of those who need it. This Mayor has failed to respond respectfully to the DPW union, among others, and we have all seen the results of an under-resourced department. I promise to work with unions and unite with workers as partners, not against them as opponents.

2. How do you envision your relationship with state legislators/legislature?

I can envision any number of scenarios in which I might work with, or against, our state legislature and representatives, but the issue on the top of my mind as pertaining to schools is taking on the charter school situation. I believe charter schools are an appropriate prescription in only the narrowest sliver of situations, and even then deserve deep scrutiny. I believe regulations and oversight serve the people, and lifting them from any aspect of government spending should raise alerts. We know that our public schools are in active competition for students with our community’s charter schools and that those students decide each school’s state funding level. We also know that those charter schools are increasing enrollment and seeing rising applications. To me, that says that they can simultaneously exist on private tuition fees and afford to offer need-based scholarships. There is no reason our tax dollars should be going to supplement what is effectively a private school, especially while our public schools sacrifice staff and services to balance the budget. This state, like this city, is liberal but it has also seen conservative leadership, and I hope that our charter schools may be seen as a relic of an outdated way of thinking from which we might divest.

1. How do you understand your role as a Mayor in view of assaults on public life?

Mayor Sciarra and I have a core disagreement in how we see the job of Mayor. She believes the role of executive is planner of the city; I believe it is protector of the people. As Mayor, my primary responsibility would be the people of Northampton, every one of them, and their well-being, and even under a friendly presidential administration, I cannot imagine picking the side of federal agents or agencies over a person or persons for whom I bear that responsibility. One reason I am passionate about generously funding our public school system is that doing so removes a key control mechanism that the federal government can use to influence what and how our kids and communities are learning; this is why, in the U.S., the local nature and independence of education has historically been carefully enshrined. By guarding the safety and security of our residents and workforce, while insulating our spending needs as much as possible from federal dependence, I believe Northampton can confidently protect Northamptonians from the modern-day assaults on public life. This is why I find the conservative and authoritarian leanings of our current leadership so horrifying; in an era of unchecked lawlessness and graft, cruelty and greed, it is up to communities like ours and populations like the ones that we attract to stand up as beacons of progressive governance for the rest of the country and world. I feel that it is our collective responsibility in this city, and I see the profound danger not living up to that ideal in a moment when others are surely looking to “liberal havens” like ours for hope and empowerment in these dark and discouraging times.