
Maya McFadden photos
Supt. Negrón: "I wish I did not have to be the superintendent that needed to mitigate."

At Tuesday's meeting, Brennan staffers say goodbyes.
(Updated) The Board of Education took a final vote Tuesday on a $220.7 million budget for the fiscal year that started Tuesday.
That now-approved fiscal plan will see the school district close Brennan-Rogers School and eliminate 76 teacher and central office positions, all in an effort to mitigate the budget deficit and avoid layoffs.
The Board of Education voted 6 – 0 in support of that Fiscal Year 2025 – 26 (FY26) budget during a special meeting that took place at John C. Daniels School in the Hill. Supt. Madeline Negrón and school board members repeatedly said that this budget legally must be balanced.
The only Board of Education member not to vote in support of the final budget plan was Andrea Downer.
Instead of voting against the proposal, however, Downer abstained from a vote altogether. “I believe this could’ve been prevented,” Downer said about the closure of Brennan-Rogers School in particular.
The school board meeting took place 45 minutes after Negrón, Board of Education President Orlando Yarborough, and Mayor Justin Elicker hosted a press conference at John C. Daniels School to speak about the FY26 budget plan.
It also took place several hours after Elicker announced his plans to propose sending $3 million more in city funds to the school district, on top of the $5 million bump already included in the alders-approved budget for the fiscal year that started Tuesday.
Update: On Wednesday morning, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent that the final FY26 budget figure for the school district is $220.7 million.
The now-approved NHPS budget closes Brennan-Rogers School due to its declining enrollment, eliminates 76 vacant teacher and central office positions, reduces funding for athletics-related travel, and makes a number of other cuts in order to avoid a previously pitched plan to lay off up to 129 student-facing school staffers. Negrón first proposed this plan to the school board a week ago.
Negrón said that all staff displaced by the elimination of these positions “have been placed within the district.” She also acknowledged that each cut “will have consequences.”
A few of those consequences include larger class sizes and fewer elective classes for high schoolers next year. Negrón noted that there will be no cuts to advanced placement (AP) courses.
She said that the hardest decision to make for this budget was closing Brennan-Rogers. “This is a proposal that I had hoped not to make on short notice,” she said, adding that she hoped to have more time to consult with the community and educators.
She again noted that a special lottery will be conducted for Brennan students to pick the next school they attend. She also said that “we have enough vacancies to absorb the Brennan staff elsewhere in the district.”
Yarborough explained that because New Haven’s schools budget relies predominately on property taxes, and because roughly half of all property value in the city is off the tax rolls, the push must continue for the state to keep up with inflation and invest in school districts equitably.
While Covid relief funding made up for that gap in recent years, he said, the drying up of those federal funds is the cause for the district’s decisions to make “incredibly painful cuts.”
Yarborough also said that the mayor’s proposal to send another $3 million in city funds to the school district “should enable us to avert layoffs and leave us with a very small gap that Dr. Negrón believes she can close over the school year.”
That means if the city boost is approved by alders, the district will be left to mitigate $800,000 this school year rather than the $3.8 million hole that it’s currently left with after approving Tuesday’s budget plan.
Elicker noted that the formal $3 million bump will be submitted to the Board of Alders on July 7.
Brennan Staffers: This "Could've Been Handled A Lot Differently"

Brennan Rogers staffers after the vote to close the West Rock intramagnet: "We are CREW!”
Before Tuesday’s school board vote, members of the community spoke up during the public testimony portion of the meeting to share concerns about the accuracy of NHPS’ recently released budget breakdown.
School staff questioned why the document does not reflect the district’s most recent “right-sizing” efforts, which cut staff positions at nearly all schools throughout the district.
Testifiers also urged the district to begin working on next year’s budget immediately rather than waiting until the last minute. Negrón confirmed Tuesday that that is her goal.
Brennan-Rogers family resource center site coordinator Amber Green spoke up Tuesday about her own experience as a New Haven native attending schools like Timothy Dwight School, which was closed down while she was a student, causing her to later attend Wexler (which is also closing this year to merge with Lincoln-Bassett).
She recalled her goal after graduating from Yale University to return to NHPS to support students and families through challenges she recalled facing in her youth. Now, however, Brennan’s family resource center will close along with the school.
“The family resource centers which are directly funded by the state are being attacked,” she said. “I worked this program as a 16-year-old counselor ten years ago, and I looked forward to giving back to my community. But now the New Haven school system has left a very nasty taste in my mouth.”
After the Tuesday vote, several Brennan-Rogers staff in attendance shed tears and last hugs with their colleagues.
While wiping away tears, Brennan kindergarten teacher Kristin Kazakewic said, “I think this was pre-planned and could’ve been handled a lot differently.”
She described feeling angry and heartbroken by the district’s lack of transparency with the budget and Brennan’s abrupt school closure.
She argued that Brennan staff, students, and families should have been given the chance to say their goodbyes before the end of the school year. “I would’ve been able to at least give my kids a proper send off,” she said.
She said she next expects to be contacted by human resources to begin the new placement process for next school year. “Does that mean we’ll be happy in those openings? No, because for some of us it was more than a job at Brennan,” she concluded.
As staff hugged after Tuesday’s meeting, they reminded each other, “We’re going to be Brennan strong wherever we go.”
Brennan Principal Kim Daniley thanked staff outside of John C. Daniels and told them, “We’re going to get through it for our kids.”
In a separate comment provided to the Independent, New Haven Federation of Teachers Vice President Jenny Graves said, “I’m heartbroken for the Brennan Rogers C.R.E.W. and the entire West Rock community. Brennan Rogers wasn’t just a building, it was a family, a solid support system, and a community of joy and love. But, this is what decades of disinvestment looks like. Why wasn’t Brennan Rogers rebuilt when all other schools were? Why was 21 Wooster Pl prioritized over a new HVAC system for Brennan Rogers? Couple that with the farce of school choice and the need to leave your own neighborhood to go to a ‘better school’ across town. New Haven needs to completely overhaul how we view, build, and sustain our schools or we will continue to repeat these harmful decisions.”
Supt: Errors In Budget-Breakdown Doc

NHPS budget mitigation numbers presented on Tuesday. But what about the total budget?
In response to concerns about NHPS’ newly released budget breakdown, Negrón told the Independent after Tuesday’s meeting that that document does have errors and does not include the Brennan-Rogers closure as well as several other last-minute budget mitigation efforts by her team.
“Because that was done manually, I just learned that there are some errors. We just pulled it. That’s why I didn’t want to publish it,” she said. “We need an automated platform to do it. Manual stuff opens the door for error and doing it in a rush.”
After Tuesday’s meeting, the Independent also asked Negrón why she did not recommend a similar budget to last year’s, which did have a $2 million budget deficit from the very start. “I cannot speak for the board,” she replied. “I do know that the board wants to get to a balanced budget. So again I cannot speak for them. The only thing I can think of is we already know the very difficult cuts that we made last year, and now cuts again, so maybe that.”
The Independent asked Negrón the total budget number for the budget approved on Tuesday. She said she did not know, and encouraged this reporter to reach out to the district’s spokesperson. (Update: On Wednesday, as noted above, Harmon told the Independent the final budget figure was $220.7 million.)
When asked if she expects a budget increase to transportation costs next year due to Brennan’s closure, Negrón said the majority of students attending Brennan were already being bussed there due to only 34 percent of students attending living in the neighborhood. “I don’t expect a huge increase there,” she said.
The Independent also asked whether the district made any efforts to increase Brennan’s low student enrollment over the years before deciding to close the school. Negrón said, “Every year to my knowledge, every year Brennan has been treated the way all of our magnet schools are treated.”
She concluded Tuesday that “it’s been a really difficult process. I wish I did not have to be the superintendent that needed to mitigate. Every cut, even though I know I saved layoffs, it’s still an impact to our kids. We should be adding positions not cutting positions.”

Board President Orlando Yarborough and Mayor Elicker.