On Thursday, March 27, Newton Public Schools (NPS) Superintendent Anna Nolin and School Committee Chair Chris Brezski (Ward 2) held a Community Budget meeting to explain the district’s $3.7 million budget deficit for the 2025-2026 school year for a packed auditorium at Brown Middle School. The audience included community members, NPS parents, Newton City Councilors, and School Committee members. NPS faculty – teachers and administrators alike – were also in attendance.
Dr. Nolin told the crowd that Thursday’s meeting would be the first of many Community Budget meetings to come.
A Tale of Five Budget Models
Dr. Nolin said that before assembling a budget model, her team spoke with principals and department heads across the district. After reviewing their requests, Nolin compiled what she called a “thrive budget,” containing “visionary and programmatic improvements.”
Dr. Nolin described the “thrive budget” along with four leaner alternatives, of which NPS is proposing the “Level service plus” budget:
- “Thrive budget” (increase of 9%, or $17 million) would include “visionary and programmatic improvements.” It would include funding for pre-college programs, increased high school electives, and first steps toward a universal preschool program.
- “Level service plus with restoration” (increase of 8%) would “invest in targeted strategic resources and restorations from five years of reductions.” It would expand the district’s multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) program across middle and high schools and upgrade facilities at Newton South High School.
- “Level service plus” (increase of 6.1%) would “stabilize and include minimal restorations.” It would offer level service from FY2025, plus funding to restore full-time kindergarten aides in all classrooms and $150,000 for equipment replacement.
- “Level service” (increase of 3.65%) would “maintain the status quo,” merely fulfilling legal and contractual obligations, but including funding for disability programs for students rising from preschool. It would not include funding for restorations or Full Day kindergarten aides.
- “Less than Level Service (Cuts)” (increase of 3.65%) would include no additions and only reductions, cutting 28.8 positions across the district and removing 15 elementary teaching positions.
Dr. Nolin said that she had recommended the “level service plus” budget. She said that Mayor Fuller had allocated a 3.65% funding increase, which would amount to a “cuts” budget.
Dr. Nolin said that while the Mayor increased funding for the district by 3.65%, costs had gone up more for contracts, transportation, and other administrative expenses, so the funding increase would result in cuts to NPS services.
Dr. Nolin noted that under Newton’s City Charter, only the Mayor is responsible for determining how much money is allocated to NPS.
Difficult Decisions
Dr. Nolin said that providing funding for Full Day Kindergarten aides, a topic commanding significant School Committee and NTA attention and open legal dispute, was a “contractual obligation” the district “must fulfill.” The estimated cost of aides (approximately $800,000) is included in the “Level Service +” budget.
Dr. Nolin said that she and her team had already cut approximately $2.3 million in expenses from the original “Level Service +” budget, which included the net reduction of 10 teachers at the elementary level, in an attempt to close the funding gap. Dr. Nolin said that while the district would have preferred to avoid those cuts, she believes their effects – such as slightly higher elementary-school class sizes –will be manageable. Additionally, the School Committee voted to raise a variety of fees and scale back transportation for students attending private schools to match the state requirement.
In order to match the Mayor’s allocation of funding, NPS would need to cut an additional $3.7 million from the budget. Dr. Nolin said that in order to do so, the following additional expenses would need to be eliminated:
- 5 full-time additional elementary teachers
- Overnight field trip stipends
- Principal retreat costs
- Middle school math after-school stipends
- Secondary education computers
- 10 Unit C full-time educators (Unit C educators are aides and behavior therapists)
- 2.5 Unit A and and 1 Unit B educator(s) (Unit A educators are teachers; Unit B educators are administrators)
- 10 Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) interventionists in elementary schools
- New preschool curriculum
- Elementary literacy intervention trainings
- STAMP seal of biliteracy testing
- MCAS stipends and after school supports
- Replacement technology (which would include projectors, laptops, and iPads)
- Transportation routing software (a service to examine whether or not the bus system was as efficient as possible)
- 6:45 pm athletics bus
- Human Resources management subscriptions
Beyond that, “There is nothing left to cut but [more] staff positions,” Dr. Nolin said.
She said that the district believes that staff cuts would “have a meaningful impact and negative impact on students.”
“These cuts are beyond one year, and we are struggling as a community with our funding sources. NPS is a big part of that,” Dr. Nolin said. “Our job is to make students thrive …we should not be outsourcing tutoring and testing. The Mayor has competing, difficult things to deal with …My job is your kids.”
Brezski charts a path forward
School Committee Chair Chris Brezski laid out several possible options the district could pursue in order to manage through 2026. He noted that he was speaking individually, not on behalf of the School Committee.
“This is a solvable problem,” Brezski told the room. He called the NPS budget deficit a part of a larger “structural issue” regarding funding for the district, which he said could be resolved by an operating override (the most recent operating override put to Newton voters in 2023 failed to pass) or a restructuring of City finances. However, Brezski said that he and the Committee were focused primarily on building a sustainable budget for FY2026.
Breszki said that the City has two possible sources of funding that can be used to help the district address the deficit.
He said that in December 2023, the City set up an Education Stabilization Fund using Free Cash (Free Cash refers to unrestricted funds available to the City government from the previous year) and that the Stabilization Fund balance is approximately $21 million. However, he said that the Stabilization Fund is supposed to last the district five years, so NPS does not want to cover all of the deficit using Stabilization Funds.
Additionally, Brezski said that the City’s current Free Cash Balance is $13 million. He said that on June 30, the City is expected to have $18 million to $19 million in further Free Cash, for a total balance of $31-32 million. While the City must retain some Free Cash reserves at all times, that amount is typically $10-12 million, and a portion of the excess Free Cash, in combination with funds from the Education Stabilization Fund, could be used to close the deficit.
Breszki also noted that City revenues have been coming in excess of budgeted amounts every year, which he said represents a “systemic under-budgeting.” For FY24, City budgeted revenues were $20.8 million below actuals, while NPS forecast revenues were $0.8 million below actuals.
“We aren’t making this up. This is a solvable problem. We do have a solution. We just need to get there,” he said. “So why are we going to start paring things down this year? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Public Comment
The remainder of the meeting was dedicated to questions and comments from the public, and many attendees expressed frustration with the deficit.
“The Mayor has run an over-conservative budget that puts schools at risk while our taxes go up,” one attendee said. “Our schools are suffering, and our kids are at risk.”
During the public comment period, NPS administrators – including Newton North High School principal Henry Turner, Newton South High School principal Tamara Stras, F.A. Day Middle School Principal Jackie Mann, and Ward Elementary School principal Rebecca Brogadir – shared firsthand accounts regarding special education services, class sizes, and course programming. Stras noted that she would like to see the CTE (Career Technical Education) program, which currently runs only at Newton North, expanded. Turner spoke about class size challenges, which he said were particularly pronounced in Honors and Advanced Placement (AP) classes. He said that 75% of Honors and AP classes in the history department had more than 25 students.
State Representative Amy Sangiolo, who represents the 11th Middlesex District, asked Dr. Nolin why she did not recommend the “Level Service plus Restoration” budget instead of the “Level Service plus” budget. Dr. Nolin said that she did not want to ask the City to give up funding that was needed for police and fire departments.
City Councilor Stephen Farrell (Ward 8) encouraged attendees to organize for a hypothetical operating override. “Educate those who would be paying and don’t have kids in the system,” he said.
Other City leaders weigh in
The day of the budget forum, Newton Teachers Association president Michael Zilles spoke with Fig City News about the NPS budget and shared his views on the situation, which aligned with Mr. Brezski’s statements about the City’s revenue growth:
What Chris Brezski, Superintendent Nolin, and I’m saying are complementary. There’s good reason to believe the City consistently underestimates its revenue. Going back to 2003, including the Great Recession, the City has averaged 4.18% tax revenue growth, not the 3.5% the City has been assuming.
[Editor’s note: This tax revenue growth percentage is before the effects of interest income on City’s cash balances, and the City’s annual budgets assume a base level of free cash reserves before any excess.]
Mr. Zilles also stated that certain prior funding decisions had created some distortions in how residents may perceive the City’s budget:
Paying for new capital projects at Horace Mann, Lincoln-Eliot, and the new Senior Center by bonding the cost and encumbering the City’s operating funds, instead of running debt overrides to pay for them, gave voters the misimpression that these projects don’t cost a dime, but that’s not true. Those budget changes are squeezing available funds for the City of Newton and the NPS today.
The day after the meeting, City Council President Marc Laredo – the only declared Mayoral candidate to succeed Mayor Fuller, who is not running for re-election in November – released a campaign email in which he stated: “We cannot go year to year, facing decisions about budgets and layoffs and creating uncertainty for both our families and teachers.” However, he did not say he would increase NPS funding if he is elected Mayor.
Next Steps
In an email to Newton families after the meeting after the meeting, Dr. Nolin said that another Community Budget Meeting will take place on Thursday, April 3, at 6:30PM at Brown Middle School, with similar content – for those who were not able to attend the March 27 meeting.
Dr. Nolin provided a link to an NPS Budget Communication Toolkit for residents to use in talking with their neighbors. She wrote, “Host a meeting with 20 of your neighbors to educate them on the schools’ long-term needs. You know your neighborhood best.”
Upcoming meetings in the budget process
- School Committee will hold a special meeting, with public comment, on April 2.
- Programs & Services and Finance Committees will hold a joint meeting to discuss the School Department budget on April 17.
- City Council will hold meetings about the overall City budget on May 15 and 19, and if needed, May 21.
Theo Younkin is a Fig City News student reporter, a junior at Newton South High School, and Co-Managing Editor of the NSHS Lion’s Roar.
Adam Bernstein contributed to the reporting and writing of this article.
