NORTHAMPTON, Mass.—After celebrating an historic victory in the Sept. 16 municipal preliminary elections in Northampton, the municipal Support Our Schools (SOS) movement tallied mixed results in the Nov. 4 general election, with mayoral candidate Jillian Duclos falling just 76 votes short of beating incumbent Gina-Louise Sciarra out of more than 9,400 ballots cast.
While ward-level council challengers suffered narrow defeats in wards 1, 2, and 5, SOS notched victories in four races, including a first-place finish for Meg Robbins in the at-large council election.
The 2025 elections featured four candidates for mayor, 22 for the nine-member city council and 11 for the nine-member school committee. In addition to the mayor’s race, the city’s seven ward seats and two at-large council seats saw four preliminaries total, a figure deemed “unprecedented” by city clerk Pamela Powers.
Turnout stood at 28% in the preliminary election, and 43% in the general. With just 66 votes between the opposition slate and a five-seat council majority, the coalition is already looking toward next steps.
Struggling for public education
SOS formed in 2023 in response to burgeoning crises in Northampton’s public schools. A total of 32 positions, including guidance councilors and special needs staff, were cut from the Northampton public school district during fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Class sizes have ballooned and services have suffered—a report from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education found routine violations of IEPs and other legally binding agreements between caregivers and the school department.
Understaffing in the high school has set back students’ college applications, prompting the school’s student union to kick off mad-dash organizing drives to restore funding for teaching positions.
“SOS was founded with a deep commitment to fully-funded dynamic education to our students and stable workplaces for our union educators and staff,” explained Nykole Roche, a Northampton parent, organizer for the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), and chair of the coalition’s endorsement committee. The MNA sponsored SOS’s first printed materials: signs reading “Fund Our Schools / Our Kids / Our Future,” which became a fixture of lawns and windows across the city.
Declining services have precipitated a spiraling effect as families send their children out of district and into charter schools. In Massachusetts, the state is responsible for compensating losses from school-choice and charter programs, with a funding formula that is often disproportionate and unfavorable for many districts. Northampton’s reliance on its school-choice reserves turned into a deficit, compounding with chronically declining Chapter 70 state allocations, limited support from the “Circuit Breaker” funding program and now-jeopardized federal aid.
While Northampton is set to foot more of the bill for its public schools, it has significant means to do so—the fiscal stability plan implemented under former Mayor David Narkiewicz during the global financial crisis has produced a year-to-year pattern of significant recurring surplus. With much of this funding allocated to stabilization funds and other reserves, Northampton, a city of roughly 30,000, has amassed some of the largest cash reserves of any municipality in the state.
As the Sciarra administration presses forward with a $30M downtown redesign project while the Trump administration looms over a multi-year payout from the Department of Transportation, the priorities of the incumbent government have come into stark relief.
Building unity
Frustration across Northampton came to a boil throughout Sciarra’s first term. A 2019 review of the city’s charter (conducted by a committee overwhelmingly appointed by the mayor) further empowered the executive branch to act unilaterally, especially as the mayor chairs the district’s school committee and is tasked with presenting its decisions to the city council. With an increasingly centralized administration, the mayor has become harder to reach—at a moment when public services are struggling like never before.
Accordingly, Support Our Schools took its fight to the council and, at times, to the streets. Though Northampton’s charter codifies a “strong mayor” model of government, the city council is equipped with several provisions encoded in both the charter and state law to act as a check and balance.
A 1987 state law allows the council to increase the school budget directly through a process of “opting in,” for instance, which requires assent of a supermajority of councilors and the mayor herself.
Amber Clooney was among dozens of parents who advocated for that measure to be implemented. “This isn’t a stable city if we’re constantly having staff cuts and layoffs,” she said, in reference to the city’s fiscal stabilization program. “The mayor keeps talking about fiscal stability, but it is not stable to cut staff all the time in a workplace.”
Clooney and other SOS members held numerous meetings with city councilors and school committee members—notably, Sciarra’s administration was unwilling to do so with representatives of SOS, sparking backlash at council meetings.
SOS wasn’t alone in fighting for a seat at the table: After receiving its endorsement during her 2021 election campaign, the Western Massachusetts Area Labor Federation (WMALF) rescinded its endorsement of Sciarra after she refused to meet with delegates after four invitations. The WMALF would later throw its weight behind the core slate of progressive candidates.
With pleas falling on unwilling ears, the coalition turned toward the 2025 elections. Upon constituting a political action committee, the Support Our Schools and Services PAC (SOSSPAC), SOS raised nearly $20,000 in a matter of weeks, enough to rival several years of fundraising by the Sciarra campaign. This total would later increase to more than $27,000 in 2025.
As pressure on reluctant elected officials built from the SOS campaign of fundraising and civic intervention, a majority of incumbent school committee members announced their retirements along with three councilors.
Through an endorsement process featuring written questionnaires and interviews which charted candidates’ commitments to public services, democratic processes, civic engagement, and the labor movement, SOS determined its electoral slate in July 2025. The endorsement process was led by union members, parents, and caregivers from across the city, reflecting the diversity of the coalition.
Aside from its notable abstention in the controversial Ward 3 council race, the endorsement committee put forward candidates for mayor and every council seat, laying the groundwork to form a new majority government and re-establish checks on executive authority in the coming term. With the next charter review approaching in 2029 prior to the next mayoral election, and with a majority of the charter review commission being appointed directly by the mayor, progressive forces are also looking ahead to a longer-term program of rebalancing and democratization.
Fielding candidates
While the SOS coalition fell one seat short of a majority on the city council, the election night watch party remained vibrant, with a lingering air of hope. Chants of “We believe that we will win!” and “Forward together!” rang out in the moments before results were tallied.
Many supporters were alight with tears, smiles, and hugs as Communist Party member Luke Rotello notched 592 votes in Ward 5, totaling 43% of the vote, falling 196 short of the opposition candidate. As the first openly Communist campaign in Northampton’s recorded history, the effort dramatically shifted the city’s political terrain and opened doors for many unrepresented constituencies.
“We had a contingent of high school students asking to canvass for the campaign,” Rotello said. “One of their teachers, a campaign supporter herself, asked why they wanted to canvass for the Communist. They replied, ‘We don’t care that he’s a Communist; we want a young person in office!’”
The campaign knocked on nearly every door in the ward and edged out a conservative opponent to secure a spot to advance in the Sept. 16 preliminary. Rotello received the endorsement of the Northampton Association of School Employees, the WMALF, and Local 1459 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” he concluded in a post-election message. “With joy, with grit, with relentless humanity: We will see you in the struggle! Forward together!”
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today.
CONTRIBUTOR
