Anna Nolin Superintendent of Schools
FY25 BUDGET MESSAGE FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT
Hello Newton Community! It is with great pride and pleasure that, in July 2023, I joined NPS as the new superintendent of our twenty-three school sites. It has been a privilege to begin to get to know our 2,100 staff, our approximately 11,800 students, our diverse array of programs and the larger Newton community. While the months leading up to the budget process have been extremely challenging, the results—for budget and culture—can be seen as an opportunity and as a promising first phase in development of the next generation of the Newton Public Schools. The needs of the system and the resources for our staff, the feedback of families, and the needs of students have become increasingly clear and provide us with a starting point for sound decision-making. During the past two years, Newton Schools have faced budgetary challenges resulting in a multitude of staff, program and resource cuts. Despite these challenges, educators, staff, and administrators have worked tirelessly to educate our students and to provide the social and emotional support to address the learning loss and challenges of the recent pandemic recovery years--doing so with fewer resources and increased public scrutiny and dissatisfaction with public institutions. It is time to alleviate the pressure, address staff burnout and stress, and ensure NPS is a well-resourced learning organization aligned with peer and metro-west districts. It is time for Newton to shake itself of the challenges of the recent years and begin to dream again as a learning community about both the needs of students and the vision for its graduates while we attend to the learning needs of our current students. The FY 25 budget is a bridge to that future vision that attends to current needs and extends the mind, heart and eye to a future horizon. This budget, with the support of the mayor, her team, and the support of many city councilors, restores some of the lost resources and stabilizes areas of critical need for our students and makes targeted investments in the following acute areas of need: • Reliable mental health supports for all of our schools, with a particular focus on ensuring full-time support at the elementary level • Support for student intervention and addressing of achievement gaps • Reduction of class size in both high schools’ science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) classes • Restoration of STEM electives at both high schools, ensuring more complete schedules for students and more student study choices • Extension of preschool integrated classes and expansion of specialized programs at the Williams school, further reducing special education outplacements. The community should celebrate these restored investments in the district but should not be complacent that the funding of future school budgets will be reliable or easy. Expense increases in the following areas mean that new and additional resources are required on an ongoing basis
100 Walnut Street • Newton, MA 02460 • Tel: (617) 559-6100 • Fax: (617) 559-6101
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