School Committee Candidate, At-Large
Website: emilyfornorthampton.com
Northampton Open Media – Candidate Statement
October 8, 2025
NHS Student Union – Municipal Forum
September 29, 2025
“I’m Emily Serafy Cox. I have a 9th grader who graduated from Bridge Street school and JFK. I’ve been a community organizer for over 20 years organizing mostly with women of color to build power and realize Justice together. I’ve been the Ward 3 School Committee Member for almost 6 years. When I first decided to run, I wanted to bring a fresh vision to Northampton Public Schools.
I envisioned Innovative and inclusive classrooms, innovative and inclusive curriculum – like Dual immersion Spanish programs. I envisioned a district that funds fair wages to retain excellent educators and staff. During my time on school committee I have made these my core priorities and we’ve made some progress, but the work is not done. In fact, we are just getting started. Now we need to plan how to keep salaries competitive and make a critical investments in our district to ensure it success in the future and the success of the young people we serve.”
Video Clip – With declining enrollment, what is one bold change you think our schools should make in the next 5-10 years to stay relevant?
“I have long believed in a dual immersion Spanish-English program for our district. This kind of programming embraces our diversity as a strength, is highly sought after by families, and will help our young people create a strong and vibrant society in the future. In fact, I actually think that any future override should include some kind of concrete investments in the long-term growth of our district. Period.
Before we moved here, my daughter went to a dual immersion kindergarten, Spanish-English kindergarten for two years. Half the day was taught in English, the other half in Spanish. It was incredible to see how it changed the dynamics in the classroom because for half of the day, the Spanish speakers in the room were the experts. It gave those young people a sense of confidence and belonging.”
Video Clip – Do you believe our city’s discourse around the school budget has been productive? And if not, how do you plan to move the conversation forward?
“Yes, it has been productive, if not always easy. But of course, as has been said, let’s be real. If people just kept quiet, the students in our schools would be without millions of dollars in investment. It wasn’t a gift from an enlightened . . . benevolent, you know, unicorn or, you know, the leadership, right?
FDR when he was elected said: ‘okay you elected me to do these things now make me do them.’ And that is what has been happening in our community. I am a community organizer so I see public discourse as the necessary fertilizer for a meaningful democratic decision-making process. Of course now I have not – I stay away from social media because I actually find it to be antithetical to and a poor substitute for actual human interaction. So I choose to remove myself and not engage in and avoid vitriolic rhetoric and instead focus on communications from actual students, actual caregivers, educators.”
Video Clip – It is no secret that our special education department has been under increased scrutiny this past year or more. How do you plan to improve our special education systems and service delivery?
(Response followed fellow candidate who stated: “If more funding is necessary, I’ll advocate for that)
“It will be necessary. I can tell you that. As a parent of a kid with an IEP, I have had to navigate the labyrinth of processes, confusing requirements. It’s – It’s awful. And then on top of that to realize that I actually don’t know which parts of my kid’s IEP provisions are being followed, and which are maybe being a little bent, and I’m not entirely sure how to advocate for making a change about that.
As an individual – that’s terrifying and imagine how 25% of our students and their parents might be feeling some version of that. That’s a very challenging situation to be sure. One of the issues is that we schedule our IEP system – it’s such that if anybody is sick, now we are suddenly missing services. It’s tight as a drum in that sense. And so it will cost money to solve that part.”