School Committee Candidate, Ward 4
Social Media – Facebook: Mike Stein for Ward 4 School Committee
Website: Vote Mike Stein
Podcast 10/9/25: Talk the Talk
Podcast 9/12/25: Panorama
Guest Column: Values, choices and priorities for Northampton and its schools
Unscripted Community Conversation
Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity
October 24, 2025
Video Clip – Question to candidates: Most of you probably share the view that the city can afford to move a good chunk of money into the school budgets that we’ve been underestimating research. I think that’s a big reason why all of you are up there and many of us are here. My question is: what happens if that can’t or doesn’t happen.? How do we galvanize this electricity in the air around taking care of our schools better? Everyone is serious about it, and I think there’s this energy that we haven’t seen in the city in a long time. Feel free to answer it one of two ways – either what else can we do, or just, how do we do a combination moving forward – maybe healing some of the disagreements and finding ways to just address the issue, even if we cannot do it via moving recurring 2.7 million year- over-year.
“It’s a great question. I want to try to answer it in a few ways rather succinctly and hopefully it’ll be helpful. The first is, on this stage at the League of Women Voters candidate event, the mayor was asked to respond to the DESE findings of violations of IEPs. And her response was, ‘Well, we’re going to all have to work together as a school committee to figure out how to meet those needs within our budget.’ So at our last school committee meeting, I invited her to have that conversation with the Budget and Property Subcommittee. She said yes. She couldn’t make it to our last meeting. I wrote her today, invited her to see if she’ll come to our November one.
The conversation that we had – Anat and our colleague Kerry – was: how do we lay out a framework and a plan? If this is what the mayor is saying – what’s the framework or plan where we make decisions under these limitations? And how is she going to lead that process or participate with us in that process? So I think I want to use this as an example of the collaborative work that’s always going on under the constraints we find ourselves.
The other issues around momentum and movement and energy, I think there’s a couple tracks. One is the legal track. We’re under investigation by the justice department right now. We don’t know what those findings will be. We still have to respond to a number of things in the DESE findings, and there may be other lawsuits that are brought – like sometimes those things are necessary to move change forward. Unpleasant but sometimes necessary. And we’re in federal court, too, as you might remember over a school-related issue.
I think the legal front is one, and the other is – I don’t see folks who have been mobilized and are feeling validated and seen for the first time in this city, who have been struggling with a lot of these problems, who are particularly struggling with them now, being quiet – regardless of what happens in this election. And I hope that that energy continues and we can really have some conversations about our values and our resources and how they’re aligned.”
Video Clip – Question to candidates: People are moving out of Northampton or taking their children out of the school district and many teachers are deciding to retire early. Is there a point where balancing the funding needs of children with special needs will be better supported along with classroom and district needs?
“I’ll try to be succinct too because I know there’s a lot of ground to cover, but I was talking to a constituent today at length about this very question. One of the things that I found helpful recently was the Case Collaborative report that the district commissioned to look at our PreK-5 elementary special education programming. The report was really validating for a lot of people. It really acknowledged the strengths that we have and the real weaknesses.
I think the story that it tells is the one that some of us know, or have felt pieces of, which is – there was this embarking on an inclusion program, which is really hard to do – and places that have tried to do it – it’s been hard. By that I mean including everybody in the same classroom. Really successful models need a lot of resources, a lot of training, a lot of planning, and a lot of co-teaching. We launched this and really didn’t have that, and it didn’t go well. So, we’re sort of been going on this zombie path of, like, a partial roll out and then responding with adjustments for many years, with no holistic look.
Recently, the director of student services just kind of rolled out, coming into this fall, a return to subseparate programs. There are arguments for the benefits of all sorts of models and visions to meet the needs of our students and our staff and all the kids in the school. But again, it was done in a way where I don’t really think we had community buy-in. We didn’t really have a philosophical vision or mission. There really hasn’t been the leadership, or really frankly the political desire, to have these types of conversations or really think about where we can go.
I think we have an opportunity right now to do that. We’re going to have a second report from the same firm on the secondary schools that’s going to come out later this year. I think once we have those, we really need to think about this. One of the highlights . . . is they really highlight the profound lack of trust within the community, particularly the special education community with the schools. We really need to do a lot of work around family engagement in order to repair that trust and in order to find the solutions we all need.”
Ward 4 Newsletter
October 20, 2025
“A lot of local austerity candidates are promising to get the state to pay. The ‘Too Long Didn’t Read’ (TLDR) version of my email is that there has been vigorous lobbying for years and there is no reason to believe we will see increases in state aid in the short or medium term which means we are resigning ourselves to failing our existing students if we don’t appropriate more money at the municipal level.
Appeals and optimism about lobbying the state to save our schools is a consistent theme among candidates running for office who oppose additional local funding. I am writing to share my perspective on both what the state and federal government are currently providing to Northampton Public Schools and also the prospects for increased state funding. I will try my best to avoid getting too far in the weeds but I am happy to engage more with you on a particular issue if you are interested. Feel free to reach out.
Northampton Public Schools had an operating budget of $45,603,460 in FY25. Of that figure 23% was provided by state and federal dollars for a total of $10,363,046. This funding comes in a number of ways, the largest of which is chapter 70 money from the state, in FY25 this was $8,229,089. This is part of the “local appropriation” to the schools from the general fund budget. This local appropriation was $40,778,585, made up of $8,229,089 in chapter 70 money and $32,549,496 coming from local receipts (property taxes, fees, local taxes, etc.). The remaining balance of the operating budget comes from school choice tuition, and revolving funds (cafeteria, athletics, transportation).
The state and federal government do not provide enough local support for education. This has been the case for at least 30 years. The federal government barely provides anything at all. Both should contribute more and there is widespread agreement on this point. Our local delegation at the state house have been fierce advocates for increasing state aid, advocating for a number of measures to increase rural school transportation funding, charter reimbursement changes, and special education reimbursement formula changes, among others. They are engaged with all the communities they represent and are doing their part at the state level.
Similarly, our local leaders have been as well. The Mayor lobbies state leaders including the governor and secretary of education at every chance she gets. The city council and school committee have passed resolutions in support of various measures and some members have lobbied lawmakers and secretaries directly. We have no shortage of advocacy.
Unfortunately this advocacy has amounted to very little. Even with the passage of the Fair Share Amendment, many communities did not see significant benefits for their public school funding. One of the central elements of the way funding is allocated at the state level is through chapter 70 aid. This aid uses a convoluted funding formula to determine a number of metrics that add up to how much state aid a community will receive and how much is expected as a local contribution. The greatest drivers of the formula are the property values of the community and the income of its residents.
“There is a cap of 82.5% for what the city is required to contribute towards the 100% Net School Spending requirement (NSS) defined by the state. The state picks up 17.5% of the 100% NSS figure through chapter 70 funding. This provision results in a significant number of communities like Northampton who are relatively affluent (not wealthy but not poor) who only receive the 17.5% contribution of NSS and have to spend more than 100% of NSS to provide education.
This can benefit more wealthy communities who spend significantly more (Cambridge for example spends over 300% of NSS). Northampton spends about 144% of NSS while Amherst spends over 200% of NSS. We are in a ‘sweet spot’ where the formula believes we can fund more of our school budgets but we don’t have the wealth to do so at the level of Cambridge or Newton. We are wealthy enough though that the formula does not give us more than 17.5% of our NSS.
Okay, so why does this matter? In order to change the amount of chapter 70 aid we receive we need to change the formula. As you might imagine this has serious implications for the MA budget and for stakeholders and constituents across the state. It is prime time sausage making and if the formula is revisited we don’t know how things will turn out and if we will even benefit. We will of course do all we can to lobby and advocate for the changes we think are needed but there are many communities who have their own priorities and experiences.
Ten years ago the legislature embarked on this process and studied what revisions should be made to the formula. This ultimately led to the 2019 Student Opportunity Act (SOA) and we are in the fifth year of this new initiative. The changes to the chapter 70 funding formula did not really benefit Northampton at all. It did significantly increase the amount of state funding flowing to communities much poorer than Northampton and was aimed at reducing educational inequality across the state. We are still in the midst of the 2025-2027 SOA plans.
Considering that the SOA is still being implemented and studied it is difficult (though not impossible) to believe that there is the political appetite at the state level to revise the chapter 70 funding formula again and there is no guarantee that changes made to it will benefit Northampton.
Readers of Senator Comerford’s newsletter will know she is holding an in person meeting in Greenfield (11/6) and one virtual event (11/18) to hear feedback from constituents and local leaders about the necessity to revise the local contribution formula in chapter 70 and is bringing state leaders to hear from us directly. She will again propose a study and hope that it can be passed through the senate. In the event that it does pass we are looking at a number of years for both the study and any recommendations that might come out of it and whatever is possibly implemented.
This is important work that needs to be done and I am grateful she is doing it and will continue to support her in these efforts and participate in the process. At the same time I think we need to be honest about the likelihood of any significant changes anytime soon.”
“Candidates in our municipal election promising to solve our local problems with state dollars achieved through advocacy are either offering false promises or are ignorant of the steep mountain that needs to be climbed to achieve those goals. In either case, we have students today and in the years to come that need to have their needs met and the only avenue to fund our system is at the local level.
“The decades of insufficient state and federal funding can’t be an alibi for failing our kids or a false promise to avoid our responsibilities.
“Chapter 70 isn’t the only mechanism and there are many others worth discussing, perhaps in another email. The MTA has a great slate of bills they are promoting that you can learn more about. Even if all were to pass as is, the amount of money that would flow to Northampton each year would be far less than has been cut by the Mayor over the past two years. I mention this to provide a scale of reference and sober expectations. Our kids need us to fight for them at all levels, even our own city hall.”
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School Committee – Budget and Property Subcommittee
June 2, 2025
Video Clip – Current School Committee Members Mike Stein, Anat Weisenfreund, and Kerry LaBounty begin a discussion of Mayor Sciarra’s FY26 school budget. Kerry Labounty notes the refusal of city council to meet with members of the school committee to collaborate and discuss city budgeting for FY26.
Video Clip – Mike Stein shares his views on the double standard that some City departments are funded with “soft money” while the same type of funds are denied for the school department.
School Committee – Budget and Property Subcommittee
May 5, 2025
Video Clip – Mike Stein, current school committee member & chair of the budget and property subcommittee, shares his views on the limited detail, selective percentages and the omission of Amherst as a comparative district in Mayor Sciarra’s FY26 school budget.
Video Clip – Mike Stein explains Chapter 70 State Funding, local contributions, and “Net School Spending at the May 5 Budget and Property Subcommittee meeting.”
School Committee Meeting
February 13, 2025
Video Clip – At the February 13, 2025 school committee meeting, School Committee Member Emily Serafy-Cox initiated a discussion about a midyear appropriation to the school given the city surplus that had been recently announced. Mayor Sciarra stated that there had already been a mid-year appropriation. Mike Stein addresses the mayor’s statement about a midyear appropriation, clarifying that it had been $40,000 for two paras resulting from a health and safety grievance. Mike Stein states his concern about the lack of attention given to building safety due to understaffing and the lack of focus on reading/math intervention staffing at the middle and high school.
“I know we just did a midyear appropriation – it was two Paras for $40,000 for the rest of the year in response to a health and safety grievance, so this conversation is a very different conversation. I think that given the reality of the cuts and the further service degradation, safety issues, and failure to meet IEPs that we’ve heard all about throughout the entire year and were warned when the cuts were made last year were going to happen.
I think it’s incumbent upon us as a body to do what we can. We can’t control whether or not that money gets brought forward to be appropriated, but as a body I think we need to respond to what our staff and what our students are telling us, and they’re telling us they’re in crisis and some of that crisis can be alleviated by increasing staffing levels and other resources.
I think we should make a motion to do so. I think we should ask for that type of appropriation. It’s hard to know exactly what to ask for, especially in a vacuum with no preparation. When I was thinking about this, I was thinking of going back to the cut list, but situations change. I understand the staffing that we voted for in July essentially is no longer necessarily representational of the staffing across the district as situations change. I think we’re better off going for a lump sum, which if awarded we can then pass a specific line item budget on.
It’s hard to estimate what that should be. It is February – there are still four more months, five more months – we cut significant amount of positions. I think to be realistic – just to bring up the level of services to even a position where we had last year while we still had 13 Cuts coming into that year. I think that’s a place to start.
I would also really like to see us take seriously the fact that we haven’t done anything for reading and math remediation for JFK or NHS. I think those students have been particularly hard hit. When we heard the program of study recently, it was very clear from the principal that we have no Tier 2 services at the high school.
How do we expect kids to actually make up any ground?
It feels like in a lot of ways we’ve written a lot of these students off. We got curriculum money from the state because of the changes in the reading curriculum – changes demanded by the state, which is sort of the problem we’re in, and that was just for K through 5. So I’d like us to have a conversation about how we’re going to actually address those needs.
I would make a motion that we request the superintendent to bring a midyear appropriation request to the city council or the mayor for $600,000.”
Video Clip – During a conversation about a midyear appropriation at the February 13, 2025 meeting, school committee member Mike Stein explains the limitations of the school committee without a city council that will opt-in to school budget decisions.
“I really appreciate the conversation because I think it’s getting down to the heart of the matter of what the territory of disagreement and possibility is. I really appreciate Member Agna recognizing that the sort of central conflict is around Fidelity to a plan or adjusting that plan. And this gets to Member Ghazey’s question – if the mayor is going to stick with this plan, which she in her last presentation said she was going to, she’s going to manufacture a deficit on paper for the schools by not building it into the budget. But that’s a choice, and the type of conversation that we are going to have as a body can’t be limited to ‘how are we going to meet our needs within the budget that’s being offered’ – which right now is a 4% increase of the local appropriation that we got last year.
So 4% over the 40 million 800 thousand and change – with some caveat differences if the state gives us that extra $104 dollars – blah blah – so if the conversation is just ‘how are we going to divvy up that pot’ – that’s not the conversation we want to have. The conversation really is: ‘how are we going to meet the needs of the city?’
And there’s two ways to do it. One is by amending or changing the Fiscal Stability Plan – the way it’s assigning percentages. And the other way is – if you don’t want to change the plan – is you make value decisions about what needs to be prioritized within the confines of that plan.
Those are all possibilities and choices. The problem we have is there’s only one person authorized to make any of those decisions. We can say whatever we want, the community said it forever, and it doesn’t matter. So I think what I would suggest is either we don’t say we want it to be recurring, we can or we can say we want it to be built into ‘built into the base,’ or we say we want the city council to opt-in because right now the situation is that you’re getting 4%.
So we’re constrained. If we want to have a conversation that we can do something else, the city council has to opt-in and the mayor then has to choose not to block it. But we have no power here aside from pressure and signaling what the needs of the school are. That’s why I think we should ask for a midyear appropriation.
The other issue – is, like, ‘the perfect’ cannot be the enemy of ‘the good.’ In an ideal world we would hire in this way and it would be beautiful, but we’re in a crisis and I think Member Weisenfreund got to some of these points when she was asking how the superintendent could be prepared. Frankly – I asked for this meeting a month ago and there should have been a list – and I think there is a list – I think that list is what is being talked about for the budget that’s already underway. So this is not some inescapable gulf that we can’t overcome and we’ve got to have a sense of urgency about it.
The other thing I want to say is that, with very few exceptions, every one-time dollar starts off as recurring revenue, with very few exceptions and that’s by design. That’s a fiscal stability plan: underestimate recurring revenues in order to generate free cash based on DOR guidance that we then use for onetime expenses, or put in all these various savings accounts. That’s a political choice in the way we budget. It could be different.
The gulf we’re in right now, the problem we’re in, is slightly compounded by ESSR, but really about one-time funds and recurring revenue. There’s recurring revenue which is school choice, which built up over time and magically became one-time funds because it wasn’t spent down in the exact amount as the next year’s appropriation was. So was a magically made one-time money that then subsidized, not building into the appropriation the last two contracts and the WINS model. That’s the problem and the mayor built 1.2 million back in but we had like a $4 million gulf essentially we’re looking at.
The political question is: do you want to build back in enough to support operations or not? And so far the answer has been No. So that’s where we’re at. There’s very little we can do. I would encourage us as a body to advocate for the students and the staff and the families that are begging us to advocate. We can’t control if we get the money but we can control whether or not we ask for it and it’s frankly the least we can do.”
Video Clip -At the February 13, 2025 school committee meeting, Mike Stein clarifies his statement that the mayor manufactures a deficit for the schools by not building needed funds into the school budget.
“What I mean is – you can’t have a city continually generating surpluses and then say you have a deficit. The deficit is on paper by the way you decide to budget your revenues.
It’s not a real deficit. It’s an unfunded request.
So if we pass a budget that she (mayor) won’t fund, even though the city has surplus revenue – to call it a deficit is really weird – because the city is not like running a deficit. It’s a deficit within the budget the way she’s decided to lay it out, but that’s a choice. The city is generating surplus revenue, right? That’s why we just certified nearly $12 million in free cash, right?
Part of that is surplus revenue from FY24 and part of that is surplus revenue from FY23, and part of that is left over ARPA money that’s been kicking around, which I don’t know why it was in an undesignated fund. Anyway but the idea about this is that – to call it a deficit only makes sense within the confines of how It’s been constructed as a budget, not in terms of what the actual – It’s not as if there’s a $2 million hole that then the city is going to have to fill with money they don’t have. They can choose to fill it. They could choose to build it in. Or they could choose to fund it with any of the reserve cash they have, except for the Enterprise Funds. Those are choices. Those are political choices . . .
“… I mean I think that’s the really hard thing to understand here is that even when the mayor says ‘we’re pushing revenues,’ still in that presentation it said ‘we’re not going to go up to the 5 to 7% new DOR guidance on producing excess revenue. We’re going to stay at 3 to 5%.’
That means, to my ear, that at minimum their pushed revenues are still going to return at least 3% – and they’re exceptionally good at hitting those returns – mostly it’s been 5 to 7%, in that range, the last four years. So 3% of $140 million is a lot of money. So the real conservative risk is that we’re going to have like maybe $4 million dollars in surplus revenue. That’s what we’re talking about – that’s the super conservative situation. That is a component.
I understand that the idea is that we only have the overrides. That’s the only part of the Fiscal Stability Plan. But the other real financial policy that’s driving most of the decision-making is adherence to this guidance in producing one-time cash from recurring revenue. And the question is: how much do we want to do if we can’t fund basic services?
But that’s not the debate we can have, right? And as I said, that’s not the only choice. You could keep everything the same, allocate more money to the schools and less money to other services. Those are choices. Those are all choices and there’s only one person that gets to make them and it’s not us.”
Mike Stein has provided numerous statements about funding public schools in his role as Ward 4 School Committee Member and Chair of the Budget and Property Subcommittee this year. Additional recordings of his statements are in progress and will be shared on this page.
