NORTHAMPTON — With municipal elections still six months away, the winds of change are blowing through the Northampton School Committee.

Of the nine School Committee members who started the current two-year term, seven will not return next year. Five members have announced they will not seek re-election, one stepped down in the middle of the term and another, Aline Davis, has announced her intention to run for the Ward 5 seat on the City Council. That leaves only two members and the mayor, who serves as the chair of the School Committee, remaining.

The departure of a majority of School Committee members comes following more than a year of tense and emotionally heated discussions regarding the city’s education budget. Last year’s school budget discussions saw widespread protests and sharp divisions over staffing cuts, and the schools this year face a similar prospect.

But with all the turbulence over recent budget discussions, it’s easy to forget that the school district had its fair share of controversies and crises well before last year’s budget season.

“It hasn’t been exactly smooth sailing in the time since I took office,” said Gwen Agna, the outgoing vice chair of the School Committee who has served since 2021. “Many of us felt we had things we wanted to support, rather than having to deal with crises.”

The COVID-19 pandemic was the first and undoubtedly biggest crisis, which affected everything. Like every school district, there were fraught debates over remote learning, masking, and the effects on student mental health.

As the pandemic began to subside, other controversies emerged. There was the departure of Northampton High School’s principal, Lori Vaillancourt, after a public records request revealed she had described students as “asshats” in an email. The district’s superintendent at the time, John Provost, also left in 2022, leading to a search for both a  new high school principal and a new superint endent.

More recently, the district announced an investigation after a hot mic picked up educators appearing to acknowledge the district doesn’t always follow individual education plans (IEPs) and criticizing a parent, Gaurav Jashnani, who filed a complaint with the state that the district failed to comply with special education laws.

The backlash against the budget has led to the creation of an advocacy group, Support Our Schools, as well as the formation of a political action committee, going under the same name. The Support Our Schools PAC has pledged to support candidates advocating for higher funded school budgets and has raised more than $20,000 to that end, according to the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance. Though PACs are limited in how much they can directly support a candidate, the money raised may be used for indirect support via advertising and door-knocking campaigns.

“The reason why we opened the PAC is to encourage people who share our values to run,” said Tyler Barnett, a Northampton resident who serves as the treasurer for the Support Our Schools PAC. “A candidate is more likely to be endorsed if they’re committed to re-imagining the budget process.”

Barnett said that in the coming weeks, the PAC would look to form an endorsement committee that would assess each candidate running in the election and determine if they should be supported. The committee would be made up of volunteers on the PAC’s mailing list, Barnett said.

Currently, four new candidates have filed paperwork to run for seats being vacated by departing School Committee members: Tiffany Jewell for at-large, Alena Bartoli for Ward 1, Angela Wack for Ward 2 and Cynthia Mahoney for Ward 6. Bartoli has donated several times to the Support Our Schools PAC, according to OCPF data, and Mahoney has spoken at School Committee meetings in favor of an increased budget during public comment period.

The two committee members who haven’t announced their future plans, Ward 4’s Michael Stein and Ward 3’s Emily Serafy-Cox, have strongly advocated for higher school budgets. Neither have pulled nomination papers to run for another term, but the deadline to do so is not until July.

City Council movement

The debate over the school budget also has spilled into the electoral races for Northampton City Council. Deborah Henson, an at-large candidate, has indicated that issues related to the school budget motivated her to run for a council seat.

“If we allow [staff cuts] to happen, we are complicit in this public education disaster. That’s why I decided to run for At-Large City Councilor,” Henson wrote in a statement announcing her candidacy. “I want to advocate for the majority’s views — yes, a truly democratic approach.”

Ward 5’s Alex Jarrett, the council president has announced he is not seeking re-election this year. Marissa Elkins, an at-large councilor who was opposed to the budget advocated last year by Support Our Schools, also informed the Gazette that she was not running for another term, but did not provide any further comment.

Davis also cited budget discussions as part of her platform for running for the Ward 5 seat. A longtime educator, Davis has been more critical of large budget increases during her time on the School Committee, saying such an amount is unsustainable for the schools.

“The public schools are a huge part of the city’s operations,” Davis wrote in a statement announcing her candidacy. “The Council would benefit by having at least one member who has worked in the classroom, and who has dealt with the challenges of managing our school system’s complex budget.”

Barnett said that no matter the outcome of the election, the Support Our Schools PAC and the movement that spawned it were here to stay.

“Some people think we’ll go away if the budget issue is done with, but this is just the beginning,” Barnett said. “Even if people we support get elected, we’re going to hold them accountable. This is a multi-year effort.”