Newton Community Education is in financial trouble, and the School Committee is weighing whether it can help.
Launched more than 30 years ago, the organization provides academics, enrichment courses and other services to kids and adults in Newton, funded by fees.
But in recent years, according to NCE Director Kate Carpenter Bernier, the organization has had to start paying employee benefits and pension costs and pitching in for custodial services, and those things don’t come cheap.
“Changes to the cost environment in 2007 and particularly from 2014-2024 with the addition of the pension expense have put NCE into a cost deficit,” Carpenter Bernier wrote in a memo to the School Committee.
NCE takes in $1.8 million a year and has $1.7 million in direct costs (salaries and bills), the memo lays out. That leaves $100,000 in surplus money.
But employee benefits cost $159,000 a year, pensions cost $153,000, custodial services cost $63,000 and PRC permits cost $42,000. That creates an annual deficit of $317,000.
“We would like to propose that either NPS or City of Newton provide relief for NCE pension, benefits, and custodial costs,” Carpenter Bernier’s memo continues. “This would be similar to how community education programs are supported in neighboring towns (Brookline, Needham, and Concord/Carlisle).”
The idea was met with some debate among School Committee members Monday night.
“I wouldn’t support dissolving them,” Vice Chair Emily Prenner said, emphasizing how much NCE does for the whole community and not just NPS. “I think we need to think out different ways and things that we can possibly do to preserve them as an organization and then hopefully have them rebuild.”
Prenner noted that her own children have participated with NCE.
“My son was actually a teacher, when he was in high school, for a middle school program,” Prenner said. “It’s just been an invaluable asset to the community, and we can’t just ignore that when we talk about the finances.”
But those finances still matter, Ward 6 member Paul Levy said.
“As we look at the NPS long-term financial situation, we all understand that there’s kind of a bogey that we have to meet in future years, and what concerns me about these numbers is if we are taking funds out of the NPS General Fund to support Newton Community Education—in the range of several hundred thousand dollars a year—after five years or so, as someone once said, that adds up to real money,” Levy said.
Levy pointed to the “broad community value” of NCE and asked Mayor Ruthanne Fuller (who also sits on the School Community) if the city could pick up some of the NCE tab.
Fuller laid out some numbers of her own: NPS budget is more than $280 million, while the combined budget for the city’s other departments is less than $160 million. And the city pays for school nurses, school resource officers and water use out of the municipal budget,
“So no, I do not see the city having the funding, despite the fact that this is a wonderful program that supports people of all ages,” Fuller said.
Fuller said the city’s Parks, Recreation & Culture may be able to provide some of the courses and activities NCE provides, if need be.
NCE employees are also part of the contract agreement with the Newton Teachers Association, Assistant Superintendent Liam Hurley said, so they would be subject to any reduction-in-force agreements in the contract.
“Finding revenue-generating programs while at the same time having staff to cover all those programs is the key,” Hurley said.
The committee is expected to decide what to do about NCE soon, so as not to extend the uncertainty into the school year when families are planning on using NCE programming.