New NHPS Admin Roles Detailed, Debated

by Maya McFadden

The city’s teachers union president and a veteran local educator spoke up at last week’s Board of Education meeting to criticize the district for expanding the number of administrators instead of investing more in classrooms.

New Haven Federation of Teachers President Leslie Blatteau and Truman School kindergarten teacher Ashley Stockton offered that critique during the school board’s latest meeting, which was held last Monday at King/Robinson School.

They were responding to the creation of several new administrative roles in the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district, including a new assistant principal position at Elm City Montessori, a new assistant principal position at High School in the Community (HSC), and a new math supervisor position.

One of those positions, approved by the school board last Monday, will see Amy Schlank step into a new assistant principal role at Elm City Montessori.

While Elm City Montessori is a public charter school, NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón said that the Blake Street school’s board of trustees decides how to use the school’s funds. Therefore, “in this particular case, the board of trustees elected to add an assistant principal to address growing enrollment.”

Under Connecticut General Statutes §10-66ee, NHPS is required to provide funding for New Haven students who attend local charter schools like Elm City Montessori, Negrón explained.

Schlank began her teaching career as a paraprofessional at Davis Street School. She’s worked as a third- and fourth-grade classroom teacher and as an administrative intern at the now-closed Quinnipiac STEM School. She is a parent of three NHPS students and was most recently in the role of director of student support at Elm City Montessori. Her starting salary is $141,634.

Before Negrón’s personnel report recommendations Monday, Blatteau and Stockton shared public testimony raising concerns with what they see as the school district reducing classroom and student-facing staff while simultaneously expanding administrative management staff.

Blatteau said that it seems NHPS is expanding management rather than prioritizing classroom positions, which in effect may “squander” the community’s years-long efforts and momentum built around increasing state funding for public education.

Stockton agreed, noting that over the past five years teaching positions have seen “reductions in force” along with classrooms and schools being closed. That means, she said, teaching loads are getting larger while the district seems to be funding more non-student facing positions.

Click here to read Stockton’s testimony in full.

She spoke about the district’s math department as an example. NHPS’ math department has several certified district math coaches that support the district’s math supervisor but are not in the classrooms teaching; meanwhile, Stockton pointed out that the district has around 10 math-teacher vacancies.

She added that NHPS recently posted another math supervisor position to work out of central office. The job, posted on July 23, is for a Supervisor of Secondary Mathematics (7–12 grades).

Stockton called on the district to instead consider combining its math and science supervisors, as it has done recently with its ELA and social studies supervisor roles.

Also included in Monday’s personnel report was an administrative role reclassification for Jennifer Novelli to move from being a Supervisor of Elementary Reading and Language Arts to a Director of Humanities, which will include supervising literacy and social studies. Novelli’s salary will increase to $189,670, which is up from her starting salary of $167,000 when the second supervisor of reading position was created in 2023.

When the Independent asked Negrón after Monday’s meeting what the newly posted math position will bring to the district that it doesn’t already have, Negrón said, “we’re not there yet.” She said once a hire is made she will “continue to assess whenever opportunities come up for how can I do two things, address the needs and gaps that I’m seeing in the organization while at the same time being more cost effective.”

In response to some concerns raised during public comment, Negrón also said, “We do agree with public comment that it is all about where we can be strategic and innovative in closing some needs but at the same time being efficient.”

She further explained that NHPS’ supervisor of social studies recently retired and so she decided she would not put another staffer in that role and instead will reclassify the ELA supervisor to oversee social studies. “The funds that remain from the prior salary that was in our budget will now be shifted to support eventually the restructuring that we want to do inside of mathematics, similarly to what we’ve already done in literacy.”

Stockton also raised concerns with the creation of the two new admin positions at HSC and Elm City Montessori. “What has left this board to determine this is the best use of our limited budget?” she asked. “I wonder why you, more than any of our past boards, vote to grow a layer of supervision and management between the central office and classrooms that never existed before?”

Negrón explained Monday that the new HSC role to be held by Lincoln Bassett Assistant Principal Nellie Martinez will save the district $76,298. She said that, in 2012, NHPS had an arrangement with NHFT to support the unique way HSC was run, which was by teachers. At the start of the agreement, HSC had three leader roles held by teachers to keep the school running in accordance with its original mission. One was a building leader, one was assigned to lead academics, and one was assigned to climate and culture.

“Over the years that evolved to the point that basically the district had taken it over and started running it just like any other high school in the New Haven Public Schools,” Negrón told the Independent. “There was an MOU that was done with NHFT and SAA to reflect the way that that school has been managed.”

As part of that agreement the parties set up a two-phase structure that would first assign an administrator the principal role rather than a teacher as building leader. NHPS completed that first phase during the 2025-26 school year, with Nicholas Perrone now serving as HSC’s principal. “For transition purposes we said we were not going to remove everything at once,” Negrón said.

That means the 2026-27 school year will include the next phase, which is introducing an administrator to the assistant principal role. That will be Martinez, who was included as a transfer in the personnel report last Monday. “That’s how this position came about,” Negrón said.

HSC’s third leadership role designed for a teacher has been vacant and therefore will be combined into the assistant principal role, bringing the district savings of $76,000.

Stockton concluded that, as a kindergarten teacher at Truman School, she has been asking for professional-learning support for a full year, but her request hasn’t been met. She said she has been invited by an educator in a neighboring school district, which is using the same curriculum NHPS uses, to visit their classroom in the fall to receive guidance in parts of the curriculum. She said that, if professional development is not offered by the district, she plans to take a personal day to practice so that she can better teach her students.

When the school board voted 5-0 on the action items of the personnel report Monday, Board of Education members Ed Joyner, Matt Wilcox, and Mayor Justin Elicker each spoke separately on how NHPS spends less than other school districts around the state on administrators.