by Maya McFadden The New Haven independent
Thursday’s forum made up of four FAME parents, city/school district staffers, and media.
Mayor Justin Elicker and Supt. Negrón help FAME families sign state advocacy interest forms to join the budget fight.
In front of a group of four parents from the Family Academy of Multilingual Exploration (FAME) school, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Supt. Madeline Negrón and Chief Finance Officer Amilcar Hernandez said that maintaining the current resources and staff at the Fair Haven K-8 school alone would require an increase of $178,437 next fiscal year.
A “status quo” budget across the district, meanwhile, could cost nearly tens of millions of dollars more as a result of contractual raises for staff and rising costs for other services and programs.
Negrón and Hernandez provided those school-specific and citywide updates Thursday morning during a budget forum hosted in the 255 Blatchley Ave. school’s cafeteria.
During their presentation, Negrón and Hernandez laid out the district’s financial priorities and plans for the current and next fiscal year. They emphasized throughout the financial challenges the district faces, given the state’s relative underfunding of municipal school districts and the high costs of educating multilingual learners and students with special needs.
Thursday’s meeting was the first of six budget forums that NHPS will be hosting at schools across the community.
Future budget forums will take place at Wilbur Cross on Feb. 4 at 6 p.m., at Truman School on Feb. 5 at 9 a.m., and at Nathan Hale School on Feb. 5 at 4:30 p.m. Negrón noted that a goal of the budget forums is for district leaders to hear directly from community members on the NHPS budget; another goal is to help the district “continue to adapt our strategies for engaging with families.” That includes central office staff engaging more with the school communities because “the more listening to one another we do, the better off we’re going to be.”
At each budget forum, Negrón and Hernandez plan to present the community with detailed breakdowns of the host school’s budget. While at FAME Thursday, Negrón said that FAME’s budget for the current fiscal year is $3,964,622. That includes the cost of 49 staffers, field trips, instruction supplies, and more. She noted that in order to keep the “status quo” with the exact same number of staff next fiscal year, NHPS will need to spend $4,143,059 on FAME.
“At the very least we want to maintain what they do have,” Negron said. “The cost of educating our children continues to go up and so the gap is getting wider.”
Negrón attributed the small turnout at Thursday’s meeting in part to the snow’s impact on parking in the neighborhood, especially during the school day. Negrón said she enjoyed the intimate conversation with the parents because she could tailor it to each of their specific needs. The majority of Negrón’s and Hernandez’s presentation at FAME Thursday was done in Spanish.
Negrón said the district is focusing on addressing chronic absenteeism and bolstering multilingual and special education programs, all while struggling to balance its own budget. She said the state’s underfunding of public school districts like New Haven’s is a main reason for NHPS’ financial challenges.
Negrón underscored that while the district strives to meet the needs of a growing and diverse student population, it must also advocate in Hartford for increased funding through the state’s Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula. Negrón and Hernandez said the state’s funding of local public school districts like New Haven’s has not kept up with the high costs of educating multilingual learners and students with special learning needs.
According to the state’s school district report card, New Haven’s percentage of students with disabilities has increased from 15 percent in 2021-22 to 16 percent in 2024-25; the number of English-language learners in New Haven increased from 19 percent in 2021-22 to 24 percent in 2024-25; and New Haven’s total student enrollment declined by 603 students between 2021 to 2025. That “report card” states that New Haven currently has 18,817 students and 1,842.9 full-time staff across 57 different schools and programs.
For the 2025-26 school year, NHPS’ general fund report forecast that, as of Dec. 31, 2025, the district is looking at a $8,845,191 deficit for the fiscal year that ends June 30. Hernandez said while numbers are still changing and coming in, the district has practically reached the point of having nothing left to cut. “We cannot lay off anymore teachers or stop transportation for our children,” he said to the FAME community Thursday.
As the district prepares for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, Negrón and Hernandez are encouraging NHPS families to join the district in its fight for more state funding. As it did last year alongside several neighboring school districts, NHPS plans to advocate for updated funding formulas that truly reflect the district’s needs and the cost of education for all. Negrón said that the district plans to advocate for the state to introduce to the ECS formula a funding weight for multilingual learners and special education students.
As the district gears up to demand change at the state level, Negrón shared with parents Thursday that the district is working on improving its in-house budget initiatives as well. She said it’s Fiscal Year 2025-26 (FY26) goal of achieving a transparent and equitable budget has included realigning its Title I grant to serve all neighborhood schools, realigning the district’s Perkins funding to expand its technical education for student career offerings at Wilbur Cross and Hillhouse, and redesigning its in-house suspension team to work in “student success specialist” roles to proactively support schools and students with academic and behavioral interventions.
Hernandez presented the district’s budget numbers for each year since 2016. Some of those years ended with deficits, some with small surpluses. Last fiscal year, NHPS’ approved budget of $208,263,784 ended with a $4,958,909.60 deficit. This fiscal year’s NHPS approved budget was $213,263,784, though the district initially requested $231,494,972.
Hernandez said that a budget that would allow some improvements to district programs would cost an estimated $252,644,902 next fiscal year. With cost cuts to the district’s line items like paraprofessionals and utilities, Hernandez said the district’s preliminary request could be $232,144,167.
As Negrón provided parents with forms to fill out to commit to advocacy efforts to push for improvements to the state’s ECS formula on Thursday, she added that she needs community engagement during the budget process to establish a collaborative approach in shaping the future of New Haven’s schools.
When asked after Thursday’s meeting what challenges related to the budget Negrón is currently struggling with most, she said she struggles to grapple with her belief that NHPS students deserve more than just the current status quo but must at least work to maintain what is in place while finding other places to make cuts.
“At the very least we need to be able to provide our students with the same programming but even that is not adequate,” she said. “What worries me the most though is the fact that we have already looked at our operational efficiencies,” she said, citing that the district had closed and merged schools and spent the last two years right-sizing staff.
“My biggest fear is I’m not going to be able to find anything else to cut that I haven’t already looked at,” she concluded.
See below for an Instagram video posted by Mayor Elicker about the schools budget and about the budget forums.