NORTHAMPTON — High school students from the city’s Youth Commission met with Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler late last week as part of an effort to try to get more state funding for the district via the commonwealth’s Chapter 70 program.

The meeting, held in the office of Northampton state Sen. Jo Comerford, is part of the latest push by the city, with the senator’s backing, to try to change the current formula for how the state distributes aid to municipalities every fiscal year. The current way the formula is determined leaves Northampton ranking near the bottom of all cities in Massachusetts for how much state aid it receives.

The push for more state funding comes following a tumultuous budget season in which 20 jobs were eliminated in the school district, despite an increase in the total budget for school district.

In addition to meeting with Tutwiler, the Youth Commission put together a video featuring students and adults involved in the school districts in Amherst and Northampton in support of changing the funding formula.

“We push for budgeting that benefits young people, and for many youth that means education,” said Amelia Durbin, one of the co-chairs of the commission, in the video. “We are advocating for the full and adequate funding of public education both within our city and the state.”

Youth Commission co-Chair Helen Tejirian said roughly two-thirds of school districts in Massachusetts, including Northampton, receive only the minimum amount of aid from the state via Chapter 70.

“For Northampton and many others, this is coupled with declining enrollment,” Tejirian said. “As a result, we cannot provide the level of education that our educators and our students deserve.”

Also appearing in the video was Lynn Griesemer, president of the Amherst Town Council, who voiced support for changing the school funding formula. She said the town had no flexibility for raising property taxes via a Proposition 2½ budget override to provide school funding, making it an undesirable option for helping their own school district.

“We need to take a seriously hard look at the formulas that fund our districts,” Griesemer said. “We value education in Amherst and it’s really a challenge for us to find the right balance between town services.”

According to a release put out by Northampton, the students discussed issues relating to charter school reform, funding for rural and minimum aid districts, school transportation reimbursements, and special education funding during their meeting with Tutwiler in Comerford’s office. Comerford herself expressed support for the student’s demands.

“School districts across Massachusetts are facing a fiscal cliff that could result in further debilitating staff and service cuts,” said Comerford in a statement. “It is deeply moving and galvanizing to hear from students directly affected by strained school budgets.”

Though the city and school administration has clashed in recent months with the Northampton Association of School Employees union over school funding, all sides have voiced support for additional Chapter 70 funding for the district.

Speaking in the video produced by the Youth Commission, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra said that determining the school budget given city constraints were among her “toughest decisions” as mayor.

“To make up some of these deficits I’ve had to be able to give as much as possible to schools I’ve had to cut other services not give increases that are needed to other departments,” Sciarra said. “We’ve had to really scale back our spending to be able to direct as much as we can to the schools to overcome this big cliff that we came up upon. We desperately need more state funding.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at [email protected].