On February 26, 2025, Newton Public Schools (NPS) Superintendent Anna Nolin and other administrative staff met with the Newton School Committee in a special session to discuss Dr. Nolin’s proposed budget for the 2025-2026 school year. All eight current members of the School Committee were present at the meeting, with Committee Member Paul Levy (Ward 6) joining via Zoom. (The Ward 7 seat on the Committee, presently vacant due to the prior representative leaving Newton, will be filled in a March 18 special election, in which Alicia Piedalue is the only candidate.)
Also attending were several NPS administrators, including Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education S. Ayesha Farag, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Gina Flanagan, Assistant Superintendent, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Administrative Officer Liam Hurley, and Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education Gene Roundtree. Newton Teachers Association President Mike Zilles also attended. The meeting was not recorded, and there was no public comment period.
Dr. Nolin opened the meeting by announcing that the NPS “Portrait of a Learner” competencies have been finalized: Adaptability, Learners’ Mindset, Communication, Critical Thinking, and Empathy. She said that NPS art teachers have begun teaching these competencies in class and that student artwork exemplifying the ideals is currently on display in the Education Center.
Dr. Nolin then moved to the main item of the meeting – the first public draft of the FY2026 NPS budget, including decisions about class sizes and team sizes, the use of stabilization funds, and the budget calendar. She reminded Committee members of what she viewed as their statutory obligation to put what they believe the district needs above all else.
Uses of Free Cash
Mayor Fuller informed the Committee that she anticipates there might be Free Cash available to support the NPS budget, but that she is not yet sure about the details. (Free Cash refers to unrestricted funds available to the City government from the previous year.) If any Free Cash were to be spent on NPS, Mayor Fuller said that she would want it to be used only for one-time needs and not recurring needs. She said using one-time sources like Free Cash for recurring needs would be a “dangerous situation.”
“City revenues only flow so much. NPS, our largest and most valuable department, will get a larger increase than all other municipal departments,” she said. “I am not your enemy. I am trying my hardest to support our teachers and students.”
Behind the budget
Dr. Nolin said that this draft of the FY2026 budget was conceived through a zero-based budgeting process built from scratch. As her team went through the budgeting process, she said, they kept in mind one key question: What does the district need to thrive? They reviewed historical as well as current spending and interviewed all NPS principals and department heads. They also took into account budget guidance from the School Committee.
Budgetary themes raised by district leaders included requests for additional personnel, missing or lapsed services, capital items, repairs, a long-range plan for implementing special education, and safety needs – particularly with regard to the district’s goal of making Newton North High School a closed campus. Dr. Nolin said that she compiled a master list that represented a total of $17 million in requests and that the proposed 2026 budget does not fulfill all of them.
Consistent City funding as expected, but potential loss of other cash
The base allocation in funding from the City is forecast to increase by 3.65% from FY2025 to FY2026, and funding from the City’s Education Stabilization Account, which remains separate from base allocation funds, is expected to increase by 3.65% into FY2026 as well. In prior multi-year forecasts, the School Committee had expected the City to increase NPS funding by 3.5% per annum for the next 5 years.
However, Assistant Superintendent Liam Hurley elaborated on potential revenue reductions. Funding from the Massachusetts Special Education Circuit Breaker program, which reimburses local districts for special services, may see a decrease of approximately 50% from FY2025 to FY2026. (According to the state, this program is intended to provide some reimbursement to school districts for the cost of special education students.) Even existing funding from the state’s Circuit Breaker program is not keeping pace with the promised reimbursements, according to the administrators.
The district also may lose its present level of federal grant funding (much of which is administered via the state), due to unknown future actions by the Department of Education. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provided NPS with $3.5 million in the current FY 2025 school year. Federal Title I grants are awarded to support schools with a certain percentage of low-income students, and presently, Lincoln-Eliot Elementary School and Bigelow Middle School are listed on the NPS website’s Title I page. Title IV grants are related to technology support. The DESE website states that Newton received $493,655 in Title I grants and $34,033 in Title IV grants this academic year. While the state of those grants is uncertain, Mr. Hurley said that the administrative team put together the budget with the assumption that the district would lose the funding.
As a result of these cumulative variables, despite the 3.65% expected increase in City funding, NPS is forecast to have only a 3% total cash increase for FY2026.
Unexpected increases in expenses
Regarding expenses, Dr. Nolin said that for the 2026 school year, salaries and benefits would increase by 4.78% and 9.27%, respectively, while other expenses would rise by 1.96%. Staff salaries make up approximately 90% of the NPS budget. This includes significantly higher staff health insurance costs, which are forecast to increase by 7% to 15% – a bigger increase than the previous 5% estimate.
The resulting budget is what Dr. Nolin called a “Level Service+” budget (see page 23 of this March 2024 presentation). This budget, she explained, represents the third in a five-tier system of possible NPS budgets. A fifth-tier budget would have represented what she called the “thrive budget” – her ideal NPS budget if the district received commensurate funding.
Dr. Nolin emphasized the district’s focus on change over time when it came to budgeting. She explained that NPS is voluntarily cutting millions of dollars from the FY2026 budget in order to conserve stabilization funds for budgets in future years. Dr. Nolin said that for FY2026, the NPS budget deficit, without allowing for contingencies, amounts to $5,969,956. With additional expenses to cover contingencies, the deficit totals $6,790,272.
What is and isn’t included?
Dr. Nolin summarized what did and did not make it into the proposed FY2026 budget, which:
- Includes the addition of full-day kindergarten aides (which Dr. Nolin called “an impactful obligation we have to fulfill”),
- Directs an additional $150,000 to IT to “keep current machinery afloat,”
- Provides funding for professional development programs, and
- “More fully funds” the need for daily substitute teachers.
The budget also includes funding for REACH program services – which support students with language-based learning disabilities, based at Lincoln-Eliot Elementary School – as well as funding for STRIDE program services, which support students with autism spectrum disorder, based at Bowen Elementary School.
The budget does not include funding for additions to the district’s Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) program at middle schools, funding for “substantially separate” class programs for students in elementary schools rising to middle school, or funding for “mental health step in/out programming” or a Central Middle School program equivalent. (Central High School serves students in grades 9-12 with significant emotional and/or behavioral and learning challenges. There is not currently a Central Middle School program.)
Additionally, Dr. Nolin announced that the district will be forced to make cuts or restructuring changes to the METCO program, which allows students living in Boston to attend schools in neighboring suburbs. Furthermore, the budget did not include funding for several requested staff positions, including a communications specialist, a new janitor, a safety officer for Newton North, and two history teachers for Newton South.
Debating City contributions to NPS
Dr. Nolin referred to the deficit as a “hole [the district] is trying to climb out of,” attributing it to multiple factors. She cited the 3.67% rise in out-of-district tuition costs to previous items and reiterated the rise in healthcare costs. NPS pays for approximately 200 students to attend school outside the district.
Mayor Fuller said that because NPS salaries represent approximately 90% of the budget and are growing faster than City revenues, the deficit is “structural.” Levy said that such a deficit results in uncomfortable options for the district.
Mayor Fuller said that those uncomfortable options would include eliminating faculty positions and cutting from the remaining 10% of the budget that does not include teacher pay. She emphasized that she does not want to use any available Free Cash to cover recurring expenses in the operating budget, asserting instead that an operating override is “almost the only way forward.” The most recent operating override put to Newton’s voters in 2023 failed to pass.
Committee Chair Chris Breszki (Ward 2) said that he disagreed with the Mayor and thinks that the City can free up funds for the district. Dr. Nolin, too, said that she disagreed with the Mayor. She referred to the City’s Free Cash as “leftover money in a savings account” and said that she would like to see it used for the NPS budget.
Mayor Fuller said that the City’s current stock of Free Cash comes from high federal interest rates and that the City does not know when those rates could come down. “I will never build the NPS budget on interest-rate income,” she said.
Dr. Nolin suggested that doing so would be “the same [as] other uncomfortable options available on the table.”
Mayor Fuller emphasized that in recent months, she had increased the funds she had been planning to allocate for the NPS budget.
Dr. Nolin’s path forward
“There are a few things that I am placing before you that I don’t want to place before you,” Dr. Nolin told the School Committee, outlining 10 options that NPS could explore in order to close its budget deficit:
- Indefinitely halting an ongoing bathroom renovation project at F.A. Day Middle School
- Eliminating 12 teaching positions at the elementary level
- Adding 10 preschool classrooms to elementary schools for tuition-paying students
- Eliminating four middle-school teaching positions
- Reorganizing the Teaching and Learning Department in order to reduce administrative overhead
- Reorganizing student transportation services and providing only state-mandated transportation
- Asking for $1 million yearly from capital funding in order to fund facilities and the IT department
- Accepting 50 school-choice students (Committee Member Rajeev Parlikar [Ward 1] asked if the calculations for the deficit included any costs that would arise from accepting those students. Dr. Nolin said that they did.)
- Shifting the REACH and STRIDE programs to out-of-district placement
- Using more of the funds in the Education Stabilization Account
Schedule for the budget process
According to its published calendar, the School Committee will reconvene as follows to complete the budget process:
Special meetings (no public comment)
- March 10: Budget review – Elementary/Teaching & Learning/Professional Development
- March 12: Budget review – Secondary Education/ Special Education & Student Services
- March 17: Budget review – IT and Non-Instructional (HR/Transportation/Fees/Operating Budget)
Regular meetings (with public comment)
- March 19: Public hearing and budget review
- March 24: Discussion, straw vote, and possible final vote on budget
Ed. Notes: Adam Bernstein contributed to this article.
The presentation and distributed notes for this meeting have not yet been posted on the NPS website.
