Following the week of February 12, when Superintendent Anna Nolin, School Committee Chair Chris Brezski, and Mayor Ruthanne Fuller conducted a presentation and discussion for Newton’s City Council regarding next steps for the Newton Public Schools (NPS) after agreeing to the recent contract with the Newton Teachers Association (NTA), the Superintendent and School Committee Chair were back out again on Thursday, February 22 at a public forum at Newton South High School to address community questions and concerns.
Approximately 25 adults were in the audience, including NSHS Principal Tami Straus and NPS Assistant Superintendent for Special Services, Casey Ngo-Miller, as well as former City Councilor Emily Norton and current City Councilors Josh Krintzman and John Oliver. Over 200 people accessed the NewTV link during the meeting. Mr. Brezski began the session by reiterating the key points made during the February 12 City Council session — including an illustration of the timing of how City pension funding affects the NPS budget — and highlighting immediate NPS priorities including reducing high-school class sizes and hiring social workers in elementary schools.
Superintendent Nolin continued by acknowledging longstanding neglect of facilities within the school system, Newton’s financial challenges including pension funding, and the potential for her to disagree with elected officials. She stated her role is “to advocate for what kids in this system need.”
The session then moved to questions from the in-person audience as well as those previously submitted online. Many questions related to rebuilding trust between parents and teachers following the recent strike, and Dr. Nolin often provided the educator perspective, citing the effects that NPS staff cuts over the previous years, as well as lack of district-wide curriculum and testing materials, have had on educator workload. Dr. Nolin also reiterated her belief in using interest-based bargaining to achieve more collaboration and avoid lapsed contracts in future negotiations (as she did in her previous interview with Fig City News), as well as the need for all people in the system to engage in more “high trust behavior.”
Responding to a question about communications during the strike, Mr. Brezski stated he “takes 100% responsibility for our communications that went out during the strike. They were 100% factual.” Mr. Brezski stated the negotiating team was “caught a little…flat footed on the first day of the strike when we were…in our conference room in the Ed Center, and I started getting a bunch of emails from City Councilors asking why…we weren’t in the building,” based on a streaming video on social media implying the negotiating team was absent.
Other topics raised by attendees included bullying, antisemitism, the timing of Advanced Placement tests this May given the missed school days, cancelled classes due to teacher absences, magazine rankings of schools, the importance of neighborhood elementary schools, and curriculum across the district. NSHS Principal Tami Straus addressed the audience to provide answers for certain topics. In response to a question about use of technology in NPS and teaching students about online savvy, Dr. Nolin stated “high school’s too late” to educate students about technology skills, and she proposed using elementary library science teams to begin that education in 4th and 5th grades.
The meeting replay is available on NewTV, and a second community forum with the same format will be held at Zervas Elementary School on Wednesday, February 28. [NOTE: Subsequent to this article’s publication, NPS notified the community that the Q&A at Zervas is postponed due to unforeseen circumstances.]
School Committee Meeting
The February 26 School Meeting was held with a relatively short agenda. Four public comment segments opened the meeting, with three of those segments featuring NTA officers as well as a Newton resident who stated he was previously the President of Hudson (MA) Teachers Association. They spoke of healing and reconciliation following the strike, with the Hudson educator reiterating Superintendent’s Nolin’s view of using interest-based bargaining in future negotiations.
Following public comment, the School Committee approved the consent agenda and then moved to a consultant presentation of a demographic analysis of Newton. The analysis results, which forecast 11,154 total students enrolled by the 2028-2029 school year, were nearly identical to the February 8 NPS Enrollment Analysis Report from NPS Director of Data and Research Katy Hogue, which forecast 11,211 total students that year (less than 1% difference). The presentation was most notable for what is believed to be Ward 8 Representative Barry Greenstein’s first comment during a meeting, when he asked about private school enrollment in Newton versus surrounding towns.
The meeting replay is available on NewTV, and the next scheduled School Committee meeting will be on Monday, March 4.