How are things going with the Newton school budget crisis? Well, the School Committee is waiting for advice from legal counsel on how to move forward, if that gives any hint.

Recently, the School Committee approved Superintendent Anna Nolin’s Fiscal Year 2026 NPS budget proposal, which calls for millions of dollars more than Mayor Fuller has agreed to allocate for the schools. The predicament has created a host of new challenges for all involved, including the mayor, who likes to budget conservatively, and Nolin, who has a bold vision for Newton’s schools and recently had her contract renewed until 2029.

The $296,352,259 budget the School Committee voted for is Nolan’s “level-services-plus” budget proposal minus $836,000 as a contingency for kindergarten aids (part of a yet-to-be-decided court case), and minus $320,000 for possible federal funding cuts.

The mayor has publicly maintained that such a vote was “illegal.” But neither the administration nor the city’s Law Department have cited a statute that’s being violated by such a vote.

During Monday night’s School Committee meeting, School Committee Chair Chris Brezski said he couldn’t give much update yet on how things are going with budget talks because the School Committee may be wading through murky waters, legally speaking.

“I know there are some who aren’t happy to hear this, but we are still pulling on various legal threads that we do not have full visibility on at this point in time in answering some of those questions, both in terms of interpreting statute and in terms of what are the various legal pathways that this whole process could follow,” Brezski said.

Brezski added that he was hoping the School Committee’s lawyer would have those answers by Monday, but that didn’t happen, and that he expected more legal clarification to come before the next School Committee meeting.

“In particular, as these processes go, one question spawns three new questions and three new lines of thinking,” he said. “It’s been that kind of fluid discussion.”

After the meeting, Brezski emphasized that the School Committee has made no specific claims about the appropriate way to move forward in the budget process, given the gap in funding between Nolin’s request and Fuller’s allotment.

“The mayor nor anyone from her staff has put forth any explanation of what statute would constitute that illegality, and the mayor last evening again declined to do so,” Brezski said Tuesday morning.

At Monday night’s meeting Ward 4 School Committee member Tamika Olszewski asked Fuller when the School Committee could expect a legal analysis from the city’s Law Department, but the mayor did not give an answer.

“Let’s see what Chris’s lawyers come up with,” Fuller said.

“They’re not my lawyers,” Brezski laughed.

“It’s outside counsel, so, what the lawyers for the School Committee come up with,” the mayor replied, correcting herself.

The School Committee uses the law firm of Murphy, Hesse, Toomey and Lehane, the same law firm the city hires for contract matters.

Pushing on

On Thursday, Nolin and Brezski presented their budget proposal to the City Council’s Public Services Committee.

They spent more than an hour presenting their budget goals and discussing how the city has been trapped in a cycle of uncertainty and the underfunding of the city’s schools.

“If we do nothing, then we will be right back in this cycle for years to come,” Brezski said to the committee.

Brezski suggested the city have its pension funding liability pay-off date changed. The pension liability has to be paid off by 2040, but the city has moved it up to 2032 by increasing the money the city allocates for it each year.

After the 2032 payoff, the city is expected to suddenly have $20 million in its budget that can go toward other things. Brezski and others have called for the city to adjust that to push the payoff date back and give the schools more money now.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t personally budget my household this way, where I’m going to squeeze everything so tight and then have a massive windfall,” Brezski said.

Nolin and Brezski concluded their presentation to a standing ovation from a packed room.

There’s not much the City Council can do. But there are options.

“What we normally receive is an allocation recommendation from the mayor,” Programs and Services Committee Chair Joshua Krintzman said. “That dollar amount that the mayor intends to allocate to the schools. That number—literally that one number—is what the City Council has to act on. The City Council has authority to lower that number, to reject that number or to approve that number. The City Council does not have the authority to increase that number.”

Normally, Krintzman continued, when departments are presenting their budget proposals it’s with a dollar amount that matches what’s expected from the mayor.

And, he noted, the mayor is expected to present her budget to the City Council on Tuesday night, with a school allocation amount announced,  but right now it’s expected that her allocation to the schools is still $2.2 million lower than the amount requested by Nolin and Brezski.

Councilor Leonard Gentile, chair of the Finance Committee, said it was “fair game” for departments to dispute the mayor’s allocation once she makes that presentation to the City Council, and he asked that the matter be discussed at a future meeting, on May 8, to give councilors more time for questions and consideration.

“I have not heard from anybody that they have any intention of offering resolutions, but resolutions are not in order this evening because of the simple fact that we haven’t even seen the mayor’s budget,” Gentile said.

Councilor Martha Bixby, a Finance Committee member and a mother with young kids, said watching the school budget crisis unfold has been difficult for her.

“Like so many parents in the room, I’m living this every day, and it is challenging every morning to wake up to see what the schools need and what they are doing for our kids, and what they can be doing for our kids, and knowing that there is this amount of money that we can try and find to get us there,” Bixby said. “I personally feel like we have to figure out how to get NPS the budget that the School Committee approved this year.”

Councilor Becky Grossman said she’s in complete support of Nolin’s budget proposal and wishes the Council could vote for Nolin’s largest budget option, which was presented as the “Thrive Budget” and would need a 9 percent increase over FY2025.

Council President (and candidate for mayor) Marc Laredo thanked Nolin “for doing exactly what she’s supposed to be doing” with the budget.

“I have tremendous confidence in her. I have tremendous confidence in her vision,” Laredo said. “I think she’s taken a system that, frankly, has had a rough go over a few years—whether it’s because of COVID, the strike, a failed override, some loss of trust, which is unfortunate—and I am very heartened by the effort she’s putting in and the vision she’s put forth to make our system a great system. Because it is a good system, but it should be a great system.”

Laredo noted, however, that, given the structure of the city’s government and the authority given to the mayor, the mayor has the advantage with budget allocations.

“Whatever the mayor’s allocation ultimately is, that’s what—like it or not—the school system’s going to have to operate under,” he said.

Laredo suggested budget gaps could be addressed with the city’s free cash.

“Given where we are right now, I personally believe there’d be a far better use of free cash directly to support the initiatives that the superintendent has identified,” Laredo said.

You can watch the entire joint meeting of the Programs and Services and Finance comittees online.