Teachers Push Back On Coming Layoffs

The public school district should sell empty buildings and freeze executive team salaries and new hires — instead of laying off 129 student-facing staffers.

New Haven teachers delivered that message to district leaders Monday night during the first Board of Education meeting to take place after the passage of a state budget that both the mayor and the superintendent have said will make school layoffs ​“unavoidable” because of a persistent New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) budget deficit.

The school board meeting took place at John C. Daniels School in the Hill and online via Zoom. 

It was held less than a week after the state legislature approved a final new biennial budget, and as NHPS plans to lay off teachers, paraeducators, librarians, and math and reading coaches, among others, to close an expected $16.5 million deficit by the start of the next fiscal year, on July 1.

Before a dozen educators spoke up at Monday’s meeting, Supt. Madeline Negrón thanked the public and school staffers for their advocacy over the months, urging the governor to increase state investments in public education. 

“I am extremely disappointed in our governor’s small increase to the education budget. We know that this will lead to very tough choices as we can only legally spend what we are allocated by the city, by the state, and the federal government,” Negrón said on Monday. (The city expects to receive a roughly $1.65 million increase in funds under the state budget through the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula grant, which is the primary mechanism the state uses for funding municipal public education.)

Negrón said her team is still developing a complete plan to share with the school board and public as she continues to listen to new ideas for cost-saving measures. 

“My team and I will continue to work very hard to lessen the impact of these cuts. Nonetheless, it will be unavoidable to eliminate central office, teacher, and support staff positions,” she concluded. ​“We will seek to decrease the scope of layoffs while prioritizing student-facing jobs.” 

During public comment Monday, educator after educator reiterated to Negrón and the board that the proposed cuts to arts, the entire library media specialist department, athletics, and support staff would undermine students’ futures. Educators were described as role models and mentors beyond their daily classroom instruction.

The layoffs of student-facing staff would impact entire school buildings and not just individual classrooms, speakers argued. 

Fewer educators would mean less individual intervention and support for students, which could widen achievement gaps and limit student growth in several areas, Co-op teacher Theresa Purdie said. 

She concluded that ​“teacher layoffs carry significant economic consequences for the New Haven community. These cuts displace dedicated professionals, destabilize our schools, and make New Haven less attractive to families.”

Others urged cost-saving alternatives that could be found through a school board audit of ​“administrative waste,” by eliminating ​“bureaucratic costs,” and by overhauling deals with underperforming contractors. 

Truman School kindergarten teacher Ashley Stockton spoke about the personal spending she does to keep her classroom functioning on a daily basis. 

“Every day, every year, I do more with less in my classroom,” she said while listing off her purchases of classroom folders, zip lock bags, and command strips. 

Stockton asked, ​“Board members, do you regularly buy office supplies to perform your job? Do you add paper towels and Clorox wipes to your grocery list each week knowing you are purchasing them not for your household but in order to bring them to your place of employment?” 

She added that, despite the lack of support for her classroom’s needs, this year she saw 94 percent of her kindergarteners grow in their foundational reading skills. 

“I do not continuously cite city leaders as the reason I cannot perform my job and achieve results. Rather I problem solve and navigate within the variables I can control,” she said. ​“Parents of the students in my class don’t want to hear me say I am unable to achieve results in my classroom because the city and school district didn’t provide me with what I need.” 

She urged the school district to move on from blaming the governor and better control district expenditures just as teachers have done for years. ​“Sometimes we all have to do more with less. A change to state funding was never promised and therefore a budget mitigation plan using the least harm to our New Haven students should be ready to go.”

New Haven Federation of Teachers Vice President and pre‑K special education teacher Jennifer Graves read a portion of a petition released by the NHFT Friday, calling on Negrón to hear from the community first before moving forward with a plan to make cuts to classrooms. That petition also calls on the mayor and board to push back against such student-facing-position cuts. 

The petition lays out suggested mitigation strategies like cutting the district’s executive team. Graves said cutting five management positions could save 12 student-facing positions.

The petition also suggests freezing spending for travel to conferences for all staff, freezing contracts with vendors supplying professional development (PD) and reassigning district supervisors and coordinators to facilitate PD, capping allocations to lawyers and legal fees, closing and selling 21 Wooster Pl. and authorizing the personnel working there from the Office of Academics to work out of school buildings, revising bus routes, increasing permit fees for rentals of NHPS properties, publishing a complete forensic audit of NHPS, and releasing a complete line-by-line FY25-26 budget with ​“no hidden line items.”

Conte Library Media Specialist (LMS) Ariana Buckley has been teaching in NHPS for 31 years. She said Monday she is not sure if she will have to pack up her office for forever, with five days left in the school year and her future employment uncertain.

While she is dual certified, she said many of her LMS colleagues are not and will have no choice but to seek other positions in other districts. She pointed out that New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport public school districts, which serve 49 percent of the Black and brown students in the state, are all considering eliminating LMS positions. 

Meanwhile, she said she was told in a recent staff meeting that school admin are unsure how next year will go because they don’t know how to make the building’s schedules, which she has done for the past seven years as an LMS. She said that cutting arts and athletics educators will limit school schedules, which could result in NHPS struggling to legally uphold a mandated prep period for all educators. 

Seventh grade long-term substitute teacher Lance Booth said he has been filling in for a science class for the past two years despite having a doctorate in social studies. He plans to get certified to teach this summer but worries about job opportunities in New Haven. ​“With my PhD I can go teach in college, I can teach in private schools, I can go to districts that will pay me more and put me in classrooms that are better funded, better equipped, more supplies … no mice, and perhaps no mold if we’re lucky,” he said. Nevertheless, he is trying to stay in New Haven. ​“Help us help them,” he said. 

Despite public requests for a line-by-line breakdown of NHPS’ FY25-26 budget Monday, the school district has not made such a document publicly available. 

District spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent on May 28 that NHPS does not produce a budget with the same level of detail as the city’s budget.

A FY25-26 budget plan is not currently posted on the NHPS website, which does have past years’ budget proposals. 

Late last month, the alders approved the mayor’s proposal to increase the local contribution to the schools budget by $5 million next fiscal year. Negrón has said that still leaves the district with a $16.5 million deficit.