Alders Kiana Flores and Sarah Miller joined colleagues Frank Redente and Caroline Tanbee Smith in calling for the workshop. Compiling an accurate, detailed picture of how New Haven Public Schools is spending money in the current fiscal year is “next to impossible to get done,” according to the district’s chief financial officer, Amilcar Hernandez. At a workshop on school finances convened Thursday evening by the Board of Alders, Hernandez and other NHPS leaders promised to release a line-by-line budget book for next fiscal year. Meanwhile, teachers union leaders who are currently negotiating for a new contract questioned the fairness of those negotiations in the absence of a thorough current budget. About 25 educators, parents, and school leaders attended the workshop at a joint meeting of the Board of Alders Finance and Education Committees at City Hall. Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller, Fair Haven Alder Frank Redente, East Rock/Fair Haven Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith, and Downtown/Yale Alder Kiana Flores had formally requested such a workshop focused on financial transparency from the Board of Education over six months prior, in May. “I have been to Hartford to advocate” for school funding “many times,” said Miller. “What I have heard when asking for more revenue for our schools, which I believe we need, is concern about the absence of … a line-item budget with the level of detail that you would expect from any public entity.” It’s “difficult to mitigate deficits” without a line-item budget, noted Flores. The four alders argued that the school system’s publicly available annual budgets have for years been far less detailed than the budgets for other municipalities’ school systems, or for the City of New Haven itself. In past years, the school system has listed expenses for broad categories — such as “Admin Management Full-Time” salaries and “Transportation” — without detailing the costs of specific positions or services. After months of public pressure during the Fiscal Year 2025-26 budget process, school administrators did release a virtual “budget book” — a more detailed breakdown of school-by-school expenses in pdf form — on the Friday before the meeting on Monday, June 30, at which the Board of Education voted on the budget. Supt. Madeline Negrón and Mayor Justin Elicker held a press availability that Monday afternoon about the newly released budget at 4:15 p.m., with 45 minutes to spare before the Board of Education convened at 5 p.m. to vote on the document. After discovering that the budget contained math errors and other inaccuracies, the school system removed the document from its website. CFO Hernandez, who was hired in the middle of the budgeting process at the end of April, told alders on Thursday that he plans to prioritize putting together a thorough budget book for the upcoming fiscal year, FY 2026-27, rather than spending time correcting and publishing the budget for the current fiscal year. “It will take months for me to deconstruct the budget” for the current fiscal year, Hernandez said. Miller pressed Hernandez to explain. “It is concerning to me that you seem to not be able to make sense of the current budget for this year,” she said. “Why is it that it is so difficult to identify what the line-items are? Why would you not be able to relatively easily create a budget book?” Hernandez replied that when he came into the role of CFO in April, “I started looking into the behind-the-scenes numbers” and found that the math wasn’t adding up. He said that the actual expenses of the school system change frequently compared to projections over the course of the year, and that a more detailed version of the budget that the Board of Education approved in June would necessarily reflect NHPS’ expenses today. “I didn’t feel that it made sense to put together a budget that didn’t make sense with reality.” The budget that does exist, said Negrón, is “just not at the level of detail that we want, that you want.” “That’s the structure that we’re trying to build now,” she said. “Was that a policy decision to not provide that level of detail?” Miller asked. Negrón said she believes that “it has always been like that on the budget side.” Hernandez added that he would like to receive more access from the city to features of the MUNIS budgeting software that both the city and the school district use, such as “position control” features that enable more specific personnel-level budgeting. “I have to continue conversations with the city” to access those features, he said. Asked later how decision-makers across different schools and departments know how much money they’re able to spend on particular expenses this fiscal year, NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon said that “the finance office sends each unit a monthly budget statement that shows everything they’ve been allocated” and “what the actuals are.” Since the school system is “largely decentralized” and frequently undergoes “additions and subtractions” to anticipated expenses, compiling that information would be “a very complex document,” he said. “What’s out there probably doesn’t go to the level of detail that folks want,” he clarified later. NHPS: We’re Cutting Costs, But More Funding Is Needed Negrón, Hernandez, and Asst. Supt. Paul Whyte provided alders with examples of their efforts to reduce expenses and mitigate persistent budget deficits for the school system. Hernandez said that he’s established a new committee to review every new contract prior to its appearance before the Board of Education for a vote. “Oftentimes, leadership didn’t get the time to vet the contract on the deepest level possible” prior to this committee, he said. The general story of the school system’s budget, said Hernandez, is that the costs of everything from utilities to salaries has gone up, while revenue hasn’t sufficiently risen. In general, Hernandez told alders that he has been reviewing the school system’s expenditures in detail. He pointed, for example, to one transportation contract that has required the school system to pay for the cost of fuel associated with the vehicles, an obligation he found to be unusual. That provision made him wonder whether the school system was being billed for fuel that wasn’t even necessarily being used to transport New Haven Public School students. Negrón, meanwhile, cited her decisions last year to close Brennan-Rogers School, merge Wexler-Grant with Lincoln-Bassett, and cut vacant positions through “right-sizing.” She said that this year, too, she anticipates having to make similarly challenging decisions. “You saw the pain that we went through last year,” she told alders. “I’ve done all the right-sizing I can do.” She promised to conduct public outreach, including through surveys and six upcoming “community conversations,” to “inform the painful work I anticipate having to do” with the upcoming budget. Alders Frank Redente and Carolien Tanbee Smith. Several alders asked about potential further areas for expenditure cuts. Annex Alder (and former school principal) Sal Punzo pointed to the money that the district spends on private tuition for students with learning, cognitive, and/or behavioral needs that the district itself cannot meet to the legally required standard. Building more of a capacity to teach special education students within the school district would save substantial costs, Punzo noted. And Redente asked Negrón about “going back to neighborhood schools” — refocusing on geographically zoned schools, rather than magnet schools — to reduce the costs of transporting kids from a wide array of neighborhoods to a wide array of schools. “That is a community decision to make,” said Negrón. “I encourage” that conversation, but “I am too smart,” she said wryly. “I am not dying on that hill.” Teachers: “The Trust Is Gone” NHFT President Leslie Blatteau and teachers Jessica Light and Sam Leska in the audience of Thursday’s workshop. About 10 members of the public — a majority of them NHPS educators — testified after the school officials spoke on Thursday. They all called for more financial transparency from the Board of Education. Several members of New Haven Federation of Teachers, which is currently negotiating with NHPS leadership for a new contract, spoke of the message they’ve received from administrators that there isn’t enough funding for requests such as higher-quality health insurance or hazard pay for working in mold-ridden classrooms. “Tell the truth about where the money goes,” said elementary school teacher Jessica Light. “We are hearing that there is no money… the actual budget is withheld.” “An institution that refuses to show its math forfeits its right to be believed,” Light said. “The trust is gone,” echoed kindergarten teacher Ashley Stockton, who called on alders to demand more accountability from the school system before increasing funding allocations. Co-op teacher Zania Collier spoke of teaching in 85-degree classrooms with broken cooling systems and unopenable windows. Educators spoke of teaching in sweltering or moldy classrooms, of spending hundreds of their own dollars on classroom supplies, of allocating substantial portions of their own budgets toward healthcare. Several cited the higher salaries at other school districts and within other city departments, such as the police department, where officers recently won substantial raises in their contract. The uncertainty of layoffs takes a toll as well, said NHFT President Leslie Blatteau. “It is unacceptable to be an employee at an organization where we endure layoff threats year after year.” “We cannot pour from an empty cup,” said history teacher Zania Collier. “Please ensure it’s both filled and we can see what’s in it.” The post Alders Press For NHPS-Budget Clarity appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less