As Newton Public Schools gets ready for the start of another new school year, Anna Nolin, now entering her fourth school year as superintendent, is feeling positive about the direction the district is heading.

The 2025-2026 school year saw a budget crisis that led to several positions being cut, declining public school enrollment, the beginning phases of a new middle school math curriculum, a new K-8 homework policy, and a largely new school committee, among other changes. The Newton Beacon sat down with Nolin to discuss the ups and downs of the past year and things to be on the lookout for in the upcoming academic year.

“A lot has been achieved. I’m really proud of our teachers,” Nolin said. “I trust that there will be difficult moments, but we’re in a very different spot than we were three years ago.” 

Budget cuts

Like many school districts, Newton is still recovering from the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nolin said kids who are in middle school now have needed extra behavioral support due to missing out on a typical elementary school experience that allows for social-emotional development. NPS has also had to provide literacy intervention services at the high school level as a consequence of the pandemic’s toll on education.

Nolin said she can now confidently tell parents that if their child is not meeting math or reading expectations between Kindergarten to eighth grade, the district will provide intervention services during the school day until the student masters the content.

These extra programs, plus the rising cost of healthcare and overall inflation, have contributed to the district’s tightened budget. This past spring, 16 administrative positions were cut or reduced, including DEI, sustainability and behavioral health roles.

The cuts prompted parent outcry at several school committee meetings in the spring, particularly in response to reducing the DEI director role from full-time to part-time. In July, the district’s Communications Director, Christina Maryland, became the director of equity and engagement, a role that will oversee attendance, enrollment, communications, family engagement and residency. A number of other administrative positions will also take on DEI-related work in addition to their existing responsibilities, according to the district.

“I just feel like these programs are always going to be under attack from budgets or politics, unless we bake it into everything that we do,” Nolin said.

She added that despite the transition in Maryland’s role and the appointment of Jesse Krotick as the district’s first director of mental health and wellbeing, the district has been unable to address the loss in funding and manpower for environmental sustainability initiatives.

“I don’t want to fake the public out. I don’t want to say we’re going to be able to do all these things when we don’t have the resources to do it, and now we don’t have any people to do it,” Nolin said. “So that worries me.”

Nolin said that the district’s mental health services will be reviewed this year. In the past school year, 90% of students rated themselves to not be at risk of social-emotional behavioral problems on the SAEBRS screener.

“While we have aligned and created some more rigor on the academic side, we want to make sure that we’re doing the same for student mental health and well-being,” she said. “We don’t want these expectations for our academics to be driving any more issues with mental health for students.”

Curriculum changes

The past school year saw the district’s first comprehensive curriculum review in 25 years. Math, literacy, science, technology education and physical education were all part of the review. Nolin said teachers have at times supplemented the curriculum with their own money, which she does not want to have continue.

Nolin said exit test data indicated that Newton’s eighth grade students showed little mastery of geometry by the end of the school year, and ninth grade students struggled with algebra—both of which will be a point of discussion in the upcoming school year. She said the district will know whether the new Math Pathways program is working if eighth grade students have mastered current ninth grade content by the end of the three-year rollout period.

The revamped math curriculum program received criticism from many parents, especially those at Bigelow Middle School, where only one student qualified for the new accelerated math class this past spring. Nolin said there will now be more students in the class following some move-ins to the district.

“There’s not this huge amount of kids who are demonstrating super-duper advanced mastery,” she added. “But the parent feedback to us was ‘All of our kids are dying of boredom in your schools.’”

Many Newton parents pay for their children to receive extracurricular classes in subjects such as math and science in order to get ahead in school. Nolin said this tutoring culture is not unique to Newton, but grew in popularity after the pandemic. She added that the only way she can “bust up” the practice is to provide the same content in school. 

On the contentious subject of artificial intelligence in schools, Nolin said that teachers and parents who would rather ignore the technology and ban using it are not being realistic. She said the district is actively discussing the differences between using AI for productivity versus creativity, and that she is also interested in what NPS students think should and shouldn’t be allowed. 

“My personal philosophy is we’re not going to be able to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that this is going to go away,” she said. “I’m old enough to have been around when computers first started going to schools. People said the same thing then.” 

The year ahead

Unlike many past superintendents, Nolin is highly involved with the teachers’ union contract process, having negotiated 36 contracts in her previous job at Natick Public Schools. 

“I’m not going to say everything’s perfect, but I do feel like the Teachers Association is our partner, and we really try to work together,” she said. “We don’t always agree, but it’s civil, and we all care about kids.”

The upcoming school year is a negotiation year for the union’s next three-year contract. Nolin said she wanted to make clear that the district’s recent budget cuts were not due to paying teacher salaries. 

“We need well-compensated teachers, and we need all these supports for kids,” she said. “[And] they are expensive.” 

Nolin said the district will be taking part in three audits this year from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, including a payroll audit and a comprehensive district audit. The latter will be her first as a superintendent. 

NPS did not have the time and resources to focus on creating an alumni network this past year. While there is no funding for an alumni office at this time, Nolin said she would like to see events and activities that bring together current and former students who have gone on to great success.

“People generally look back on their time in Newton very fondly,” she said. “I want that network to come into the schools and to be open to our students.” 

The district is also in the very early stages of exploring the creation of an alternative high school that can serve students with special education needs, students with mental health challenges and students who struggle with absenteeism. Nolin said students would be able to transition between Newton’s existing high schools and this alternative program as needed. 

Overall, Nolin said she feels the district is moving in the right direction in terms of academics and student wellbeing. She especially highlighted the district’s emphasis on civic engagement and education across grade levels. 

“We want kids who can think critically, learn, adapt and have empathy,” she said, quoting from the district’s Portrait of a Learner competencies. “That’s what I want in the people who are going to run the country when I’m an old lady.”