NORTHAMPTON — The first day of school for Northampton Public School students begins Thursday, but for new Superintendent Portia Bonner, it feels more like homecoming.

Though most of her broad and deep educational career over the past three decades has been in Connecticut, starting as a biology teacher in Bridgeport, Bonner’s first superintendent role was in the New Bedford school district in the South Coast region of Massachusetts. After finishing her most recent stint as an interim superintendent in the Connecticut town of Bozrah, Bonner said the opportunity to return to the Bay State was part of what drew her to the top education job in Northampton.

“I wanted to get back to Massachusetts, to look for a district that was somewhat diverse, that really had a high investment in academics,” she said during an interview two days before the first bells rang to kick off the 2023-2024 academic year. “There’s an arts scene here, it’s very eclectic, very different. So I found that to be very fascinating and eye-catching when I was doing my searches and looking for the next district I wanted to serve.”

Bonner replaces interim superintendent Jannell Pearson-Campbell, who filled the role when former superintendent John Provost left in 2022. She inherits a school district facing a multitude of challenges, including a persistent bullying problem, a budget facing an uncertain future, and rapidly changing advances in artificial intelligence and its potential impact on schoolwork.

To top it off, Bonner will have to navigate these challenges with an administrative staff that, like her, began their positions fairly recently. Key administrators like director for curriculum instruction Roxanne Dorrie, director of student services Josh Dickson and business administrator Bobbie Jones are all either in their first or second year of their respective roles. Several school principals in the district, such as Northampton High School’s Bill Wehrli, have also assumed their current jobs only within the last year.

“They’re all learning the procedures, and there’s really no institutional history that I can draw from,” Bonner said. “Some things we’re creating from scratch, and some things we’re trying to pick up and heal, and more than just putting a band-aid on it.”

Addressing bullying

The issue of bullying is certainly high on Bonner’s list of challenges to address. The district is currently facing a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of an NHS student who committed suicide in 2018, after she was allegedly bullied by other students for being mixed-race, with the family claiming school officials didn’t do enough to intervene and keep the student safe.

Bonner said the district’s bullying plan is up for renewal and it’s past time for the district to review its policies on the matter, as well as ensuring that the policy aligns with the school’s anti-racist and anti-bias initiatives.

“All of the language that we use must be in alignment,” she said. “We’re making sure that we are consistent and what we’re saying in one document, we’re saying in another, and that all of it translates into our actual actions.”

Bonner expressed support for the idea, brought forth by a parent at the last School Committee meeting, of providing anti-bias training not only to school staff, but to parents as well.

“The schools can only do so much, but the first teacher to a child is the caregiver,” she said. “We need to rally around coming together in terms of, what are some things that you can do with your children, so that some of these behaviors that have a tendency to be aggressive or have a power struggle with others are not displayed in the classroom.”

The budget and staffing

Unlike other school districts across the country that are dealing with staffing shortages, Bonner says the district has been able to hire for the positions needed and has certified peer educators to take on teaching roles. But maintaining and keeping those positions competitive while balancing the budget will be a key task for Bonner.

“When you have a good staff, you will do anything and everything to try to maintain or retain that staff, especially when you know you might not be able to fill that position,” she said. “All of those things come into play when thinking about the budget.”

For this fiscal year, the district managed to pass the budget without the need for layoffs thanks to $1.2 million in emergency funding from the city, by not filling some vacant positions and by reducing certain staff roles. But the next fiscal budget won’t be able to rely on pandemic relief funds that had been given following the COVID-19 pandemic, something Bonner acknowledges.

“It’s going to be very challenging. Principals are going to have to make some deep cuts in some of these programs,” she said. “There are several software platforms that we’re no longer using that we can have some cost savings there.”

Pandemic fallout

Though the relief funds are going away, the aftershocks of the pandemic are still being felt by both staff and students alike. At a convocation ceremony for staff Monday, Bonner called the pandemic a “black swan event” that has permanently altered the way education is experienced.

“There are acute effects in terms of the social and emotional trauma that our students experienced during that time,” she said. “For the most part, you want to build a safe environment for kids where they trust that they feel safe and they feel like they can make connections and relationships.”

The other disruptive event to shake school districts is the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence technology, with programs like ChatGPT leaving educators scrambling to solve the issue of students using it rather than their own original work.

Bonner said that the district was beginning to have conversations on how to utilize the technology to improve student learning rather than banning its use. She also said writing assignments may be given in the classroom rather than as homework so that students may be monitored.

“This is how the world is growing, and we can’t stop it,” she said. “That’s something about educators, we learn to be flexible with what we have, and technology, if it’s used in the right way, there should be no harm done.”

Despite all the challenges and pressures faced in the school district, and by educators across the country on issues like teaching about race and LGBTQ issues, Bonner said inspiring creativity and achievement in students keeps her drawn to education, a role she says is more like a calling than a career choice.

“You don’t stay in this field for the monetary benefits, and most teachers will tell you that,” she said. “But there’s something about the joy you see on a child’s face when they get something, when they take something you may have taught them to another level and then start to think on their own, it’s exciting and very energetic.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.

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