Public Blasts Potential NHPS Layoffs

Dozens of public school teachers, librarians, students, and parents turned out to Monday’s Board of Education meeting to press the superintendent to cut from central office staff before even considering laying off over 100 student-facing workers — in a move they warned would ​“gut our schools.”

Those pleas were shared during the first hour of Monday’s Board of Education meeting, which was held in person at John C. Daniels School and online via Zoom. 

Community members spoke up just days after New Haven Public Schools Supt. Madeline Negrón presented plans to lay off 129 employees, including 56 teachers, if state and city investments cannot close an anticipated $16.5 million budget shortfall for the 2025 – 26 school year.

At the same meeting on Monday, school board members approved the hiring of the district’s next chief financial officer, Amilcar Hernandez. They also renewed the contracts for two of the city’s assistant superintendents for another two years each.

Over 50 attendees signed up to speak during the public comment portion of Monday’s Board of Education meeting. Board President OrLando Yarborough enforced the board’s one-hour time limit for public comment after a dozen in-person and online speakers spoke about the detrimental effects that mass layoffs would have on staff and students. 

In the John C. Daniels cafeteria, beside a stage full of music equipment, Truman teacher Ashley Stockton reported that in 2021 the school board approved hiring a district spokesperson for a starting salary of $119,000. In 2022, it voted to create a director of professional learning and leadership development position starting at $172,000. In 2023, it voted to create a second supervisor of reading position for $167,000. In 2024, it voted to pay two assistant superintendent positions $179,000 for the next two years, and it voted to hire a recruitment and retention coordinator with a salary of $146,000 which was a 46 percent increase from the positions pay in 2018. She demanded that the board ask more questions when agreeing to hire non-student-facing central office positions. 

“Before a single cut is made to arts, athletics, libraries or to any student-facing position such as classroom teachers, para-educators, and athletic coaches, we expect to see cuts to central office positions and freezes applied to administrative and management salaries,” Stockton said. 

She said that she agrees the state must adjust its fiscal guardrails for public education, but also asked that NHPS be a better steward of its funds and improve its financial oversight.

Staffers particularly pushed back against Negrón’s proposal to lay off 56 teachers (including 29 arts teachers, or as Negrón put it,​“a quarter of the arts”) and 25 library media specialists. 

New Haven Federation of Teachers Vice President Jenny Graves noted that the district only has 25 library media specialists today. Therefore, these cuts, if they go through, would result in all 40-plus New Haven public schools not having a librarian next year.

Board of Education student representative and Wilbur Cross senior John Carlos Serana Musser said on Monday that cutting librarians and arts teachers would be a massive hit to schools. He recalled his middle school librarian fueling his current love for reading and Cross’ current librarian encouraging him to read The Catcher in the Rye two days ago. He added that the school’s band lifts the school’s spirit up and is a huge part of the school’s identity.

NHPS Lead Librarian Kim Rogers shared remarks alongside fellow district librarians Monday to remind district leaders of the critical and transformative work that librarians lead in the schools on a daily basis. 

Rogers declared that cutting library media specialists and student-facing staff ​“is not a budget decision, It is a betrayal of our students and everything this district stands for.” 

She continued that librarians, arts educators, and athletics coaches are not ​“extras” or luxuries. ​“Take us away and you are tearing holes in the very fabric of school operations,” she said. ​“More than that, you are stripping students of their best chances to succeed in the complicated digital world.” 

She concluded with the question of why librarians would be cut as part of the district’s budget planning if librarians are paid through the district’s alliance grant dollars, which isn’t expected to decrease next year. 

Speakers also emphasized that librarians are schools’ ​“frontline defense” in charge of teaching students about digital literacy and fact checking information and credible resources, which they argued is more important now than ever. 

High School in the Community history teacher Ben Scudder added that classrooms in schools are already understaffed, while pointing out that most central office staff salaries often equal out to two to three classroom positions. He argued that librarians are the core of school buildings. ​“We can’t function without them.” 

Many staffers pleaded district leaders to let them be thought partners to devise more creative solutions. 

Sound School Library Media Specialist Alicia Cook shared that her mother was the first certified library media specialist for NHPS and inspired her now-16-year career as a librarian. She left the school with a quote from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: ​“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

Arts staffers also went on to describe their personal experiences with students, who told them about wanting to attend school only on days when they have art or music courses. They added that the proposed cuts to arts staff would be ​“harmful” and are ​“unacceptable” because students deserve equal access to the arts. They encouraged the district to seek out new grant funding to continue its vital arts programming for students. 

Wilbur Cross band teacher Eric Teichman added that the ​“arts [are] not expendable.” Despite Teichman recently being named CT’s 2025 outstanding high school educator, he said he fears possibly not having a job next year.

He read aloud statements from his band students at Monday’s meeting, who said that having access to music instruction at Cross has allowed them to build up their confidence, teamwork skills, and sense of belonging at their school and in the broader New Haven community.

“We are vital to the mission of caring for the whole child,” Teichman concluded. 

Nathan Hale music teacher Gillian Greco Lynch also testified Monday: ​“If the district is to make cuts, it must be from the top first. This will be create discomfort surely, however, in this situation, central office must feel the discomfort that we already currently feel as teachers.

“We already feel the discomfort of telling a parent that we have not had a speech-language pathologist since December, so their student is not receiving services. We already feel discomfort when we use money from our own pockets to give kids hands-on experiences in the class that they would not otherwise have. We already feel discomfort when our building temperatures exceed 80 degrees and it’s only April. Or when our adult bathroom doors do not lock or do not have toilet paper in them.”

Negrón: "I Know The Importance Of Every Role"

In response to Monday’s testimony, Negrón outlined again that the district currently is looking at a deficit worth around 10 percent of its budget next year.

Last year, Negrón said, she made $6 million worth of cuts though right-sizing efforts, cuts to summer and after-school programming, and restructuring of the early childhood department.

She made clear that the proposed layoffs and cuts to programming are not what she wants to do. ​“I am not trying to cut things that I know are important. As a public educator myself for 30 years, I know the importance of every role,” she said.

She emphasized, however, that her job as superintendent is to ​“fill that gap” and direct where the district is going next.

She noted that all other cuts — like to vacant positions, contractual services, overtime hours, and part-time support staff — would happen before any layoffs because she hopes to have the least impact on students.

“I have no other choice than to cut and do layoffs. Did I say nothing at central office? I have never said nothing at central office,” she said. ​“Everything is on the table.”

In response to testimony that teachers took a pay freeze in recent years but not administrators, Negrón said last year every member of NHPS’ cabinet who had a contract renewal took a pay freeze. ​“You hired me and gave me a contract for three years. I took a freeze,” she said.

She said that this is not the time to point fingers at each other but rather spend the final six weeks of the school year advocating to state leaders to properly fund public education. Board members labeled the proposed layoffs as ​“Lamont layoffs.”

After Monday’s meeting, Negrón told the Independent she has already stopped her search for filling a vacant position for a school board labor attorney, which is a central office position.

She said she plans to continue looking at all job descriptions to identify what cuts to make. When asked if the current vacancies for a chief of operations and chief of staff will be cut, Negron said, ​“There’s no way I can run a district without a COO, knowing all the facility issues that we have.”

Negrón and Mayor Justin Elicker pointed out Monday that NHPS is below the state’s average number of administrators for a district. While the state’s average for school admin is 5.17 percent of total staff, she said, NHPS only has 4.93 percent.

CFO Hired; 2 Asst. Supts Renewed

Also during Monday’s meeting, the school board voted to approve a new chief financial officer, who is now scheduled to start on June 9.

Amilcar Hernandez’s starting salary will be $175,000.

Hernandez, a native of Puerto Rico, has been a longtime resident in Hartford and served as a paraprofessional for its public school district for three years. He also worked for a youth development nonprofit for 18 years, most recently as a director of finance.

During brief remarks Monday, Hernandez said he was fueled by the frustration shared by NHPS’ community. ​“I leave tonight with all of that on my back because that is going to be the task at hand,” he said. ​“I leave tonight with a list of things and items that I have to start focusing on because my job will be to support the superintendent’s vision, but also ultimately make sure that our children achieve and get to see that promise of public school education.”

In addition to approving Hernandez’s appointment, school board members also voted to renew two-year contracts for Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Leadership/School Improvement Viviana Camacho and Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Leadership/School Improvement Kristina DeNegre.

Board member Andrea Downer abstained from Monday’s personnel report vote, which passed 6 – 0.