“It’s a good thing I ride Harleys, because presenting with Brezski is kind of like that, ya know?” Superintendent Anna Nolin quipped to a crowd of nearly 100 people in the Brown Middle School auditorium Thursday night as she ducked and weaved around School Committee Chair Chris Brezski.

The two held an open meeting with members of the Newton schools community—parents, teachers, school administrators, a few city councilors—to clear the air about the current NPS budget crisis and make the case for more money than the mayor has allotted the schools for the coming fiscal year.

The crux of the problem: Nolin’s budget proposal was nearly $5 million above what Mayor Ruthanne Fuller was prepared to give the schools. The mayor contends that Newton’s slow growth makes for smaller increases in spending than wanted across all departments, including NPS.

But Brezski contends that since the city under-projects revenues and ends up with more money than expected every year, the mayor’s math is misleading. And Nolin is trying to save what she can of the progress the schools made since the strike, while keeping her eye on her long-term vision for Newton’s schools.

“The hope here is that this is the start of a long-term relationship in support of our children, and so no question is off the table,” Nolin said.

Summertime, and the living was easy

Nolin said her leadership team has held budget meetings with the schools’ principals asking what they would need to really thrive next year, and the cost of everything on the list amounted to about $18 million, a 9 percent increase in the school budget.

Nolin uses a five-budget chart, going from a budget with cuts (highlighted in red) to one that fulfills all of those principals’ wishes, called the “Thrive Budget” (shown in green). The middle budget (yellow on her chart) is one that provides level services with some additions when possible, and that’s the one Nolin has proposed. Given the realities of the city’s finances and the needs of other departments, building to a “Thrive Budget”—which includes things like universal preschool and early college options—is a long-term goal.

“Over the summer, we were feeling pretty good, the principals and I,” Nolin said. “We felt like we had a balanced budget. We were making some internal changes that would allow us to expand some of the goals that we had been talking about in that $18 million budget piece.”

But then, the chill of autumn and winter brought a dip in state funding and a spike in health care costs that factor into the crisis the schools face today.

Nolin’s “Level-Services-Plus” budget keeps services level to Fiscal Year 2025 and adds full-day kindergarten aides and things like professional development for teachers. But the district has been under-budgeting for substitute teacher costs, Nolin said, so she added $500,000 for that and the “Level Services-Plus” is more like “Level Services.”

Nolin, at Fuller’s request, dug through her budget and found $1.9 million in efficiencies that would keep her budget at level-services and then some.

“Unfortunately, our allocation at this time from the city is at 3.65 percent, which is an addition of money, but it does not keep pace with the level of rising costs for contracts, for transportation, for the cost of running the school system,” Nolin said. “That does make that red budget effectively a cut budget.”

Newton Superintendent Anna Nolin speaks to parents, teachers and other members of the community at Brown Middle School on March 27, 2025. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

There’s also the issue of those full-time kindergarten aides.

A few years ago, a prior School Committee worked out a contract with the Newton Teachers Association that included every kindergarten classroom with more than 14 students getting staffed with a full-time aide, to ease the city’s transition to full-day kindergarten in 2019.

Then in 2023, after a tightening of school budgets and a rejection of a tax levy override to offset the budget shortfall, the district recommended cuts to programs and staff, including some kindergarten aides. The new plan had teacher aides in all classrooms with 22 kids or more. This saved the district about $900,000.

Last winter, the district and the NTA signed a new contract after a 16-month negotiation and a two-week strike. But last April, an arbitrator ordered the Newton Public Schools to put a full-time aide in every classroom with 14 kids or more.

And now, the matter is in court. But the hearing has been pushed back to July, after the new fiscal year begins, and meanwhile Nolin says she’s acting as if that needs to be paid so she isn’t caught off-guard next year should the court rule in the NTA’s favor.

Nolin said she’d like there to be a legal contingency fund for that, but the School Committee has not yet agreed to it.

If NPS ends up with what the mayor is proposing for FY2026, and the money for the previously-contracted kindergarten aides is included, there’s a $4.5 million canyon between Nolin’s budget and the mayor’s allotment for the schools. If you take the money for the kindergarten aides out, that gap shrinks to $3.7 million.

The budget allocated from the city would result in 28.8 job cuts, including 15 elementary school teachers, two high school teachers and several support staff. Overnight field trips and late buses for athletes would also be gone, and the district’s Multi-Tiered Systems of Support initiative would not be expanded.

Nolin’s own budget proposal would result in staff position cuts as well, albeit not as many.

A bridge over troubled numbers

At the same time, the developmental and emotional complexity of students in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic—during which Newton’s students spent more than a year in remote-learning—have compounded the need for more funding.

“We do have to fix that structural issue,” Brezski said. “And that is only going to happen over the longer term by putting in a plan for funding from the city that is going to match the vision that Dr. Nolin laid out earlier.”

Ways to fix that, he continued, include a Proposition 2 ½ tax levy override to fund the schools, or a delay in the payoff date for the city’s pension liability.

“But we’re really focused on just getting through this year, so we can build a bridge to figure out that sustainable solution,” Brezski said.

And there’s an Educational Stabilization Fund—$21 million—the mayor established to help get the schools through the next several years before the city’s pension liability is paid off in 2032 and the budget is less constrained by that liability.

Money from that fund is on a schedule that provides more money each year, but some are calling for the mayor’s office to approve more money from that fund now, to plug the gap between her allocation and Nolin’s budget request while Nolin and Brezski find a solution to the district’s long-term unsustainability.

Newton School Committee Chair Chris Brezski speaks to community members at Brown Middle School on March 25, 2025. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

A ‘solvable problem’

Brezski is at odds with the mayor when it comes to the city’s finances. Fuller has said she doesn’t want to use one-time funds for ongoing budget items and the city’s slow revenue growth makes it impossible to give the city’s departments, including the schools, everything they want.

But on Thursday, Brezski noted that the city’s projections for revenue always fall short of what the actual revenues end up being.

“This is a solvable problem,” Brezski said.

One immediate solution he gave: Stop under-projecting.

Via PowerPoint, Brezski showed the city’s projections by year along with the actuals for those years to drive that point home.

The city has budgeted for 3.3 percent growth on average for the past 10 years, while actual revenues have come in at 4.7 percent growth on average, Brezski said.

Breszski pointed to the city’s FY2024 budget, which had revenues at $487.6 million. In December 2023, the School Committee presented the mayor with a forecast of $507.5 million in operating revenues.

Actual revenues amounted to more than $508 million.

“Our number was $0.8 million below where actual revenues came in,” Brezski said. “The city’s budget was $21 million below where actual revenues came in. We aren’t making this up.”

The bursts of applause he and Nolin generated throughout the two-hour conversation with the audience, as well as every comment from the audience, indicated a groundswell of support for Nolin’s vision and Brezski’s call for deeper long-term budget discussions as well as a disdain for the mayor’s proposed allocation.

About a hundred people gather in the auditorium of Brown Middle School to listen to Superintendent Anna Nolin and School Committee Chair Chris Brezski discuss the current NPS budget crisis on March 27, 2025. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

The only thing most wanted to know was: What can be done about it?

One audience member suggested rallies in front of City Hall. Several nearby people gave thumbs-up.

Another, Jenna Stein, suggested putting the mayor’s legacy on the table may be a play to make.

“She does not want to be the person who let the Newton Public Schools die on them,” Stein said.

Brezski cautioned against grabbing pitchforks and said the School Committee would be working with the mayor on a solution to the budget crisis in the days before their next meeting on April 2 and that the mayor has expressed “flexibility” when it comes to using one-time funds to bridge part of the gap.

City Councilor Stephen Farrell suggested those passionate about getting more school funding should mobilize, talk to their neighbors, and hold barbecues with the superintendent like last summer, to rally support for a Proposition 2 1/2 override in the near future, and to focus on seniors and other residents without kids in the schools.

“There is a huge population in this city that needs to be convinced, by parents, by the schools, by the superintendent and by Chris and the School Committee, that there will be a need for an override,” Farrell said.