$3M Approved As Backup For Schools Budget

by Laura Glesby The New Haven independent

The Board of Alders has approved a $3 million contingency plan for New Haven Public Schools’ current budget.

At their full board meeting on Monday evening, alders voted to set aside $3 million in state aid as a line item within the city’s general fund designated for “educational purposes.”

The vote means that when the school district closes out its current school budget next fiscal year, it will be able to request up to $3 million from alders to help cover any deficit. The current fiscal year runs from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026.

Mayor Justin Elicker had proposed the $3 million reserve fund in July after the city received $2.5 million from the Supplemental Revenue Sharing Grant and $500,000 from the state Office of Policy and Management (OPM).

Alders had passed over the item at their last meeting. West Hills/West Rock Alder Honda Smith, who was absent from Monday’s meeting, had previously criticized the proposal, requesting more financial transparency from the school district.

On Monday, 23 of the 24 alders who were present voted to approve the funding. (Frank Redente, a longtime employee of the school district, abstained.)

“Assigning these funds to the general fund does not increase the required minimum contribution to the Board of Education for next fiscal year,” noted Finance Committee Chair and Westville Alder Adam Marchand during the meeting.

Had the city directly allocated the funds to the Board of Education, the city would have had to commit to making the $3 million budgetary increase permanent, due to a state law preventing municipalities from decreasing their annual education budgets year to year.

The transfer marks the second year in a row that the city has reserved $3 million for the school budget without directly transferring it.

Alders set aside an equivalent pool of funding from the city’s surplus last year, which the alders will have to officially transfer before it can be accessed by the Board of Education.

City Budget Director Shannon McCue submitted a communication to the Board of Alders on Sept. 15 requesting that all $3 million from last year’s fund be transferred to the Board of Education to help make up that deficit.

Meanwhile, according to a presentation given by New Haven Public School’s (NHPS) Chief Finance Officer Amilcar Hernandez in September, last fiscal year’s $3 million allocation is still not sufficient to close out NHPS’ $4.9 million deficit from the 2024-25 Fiscal Year. Elicker has indicated that he plans to propose a $1.9 million transfer from an expected city surplus this year to cover the rest of the school system’s deficit.

According to Hernandez, the school system was required to finalize an account of last year’s finances within 90 days of the end of the prior fiscal year on June 30 (in other words, by September 28).

“The timing is difficult… A 90-day deadline is very tight,” Marchand said on Monday.

He said that while the transfer of the prior fiscal year’s $3 million fund is not definite, alders have already “assigned the money for that potential use.”

Still, he said, “We need to hear from them” before approving the item — including about measures that the school system took to reduce its deficit.

He noted that the Finance Committee and the Education Committee are separately planning a joint workshop to hear publicly from school administrators on NHPS’ budget.