The Board of Education (BOE) discussed the proposed 2026-27 education budget of $96,086,919 — a roughly $4,342,275, or 4.73%, increase over the current year — at its Tuesday, January 27 meeting.

This comes after Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti outlined the 2026-27 Proposed Operational Budget Plan to the BOE at its January 13 meeting.

Every BOE member received budget books and had two weeks to review the budget in depth, according to BOE Chair Alison Plante. BOE members submitted 40-50 questions about the budget to a shared Google document, which Uberti went through and answered.

Plante said these budget discussion meetings are always somewhat hard to kick off, only because there is a lot to cover. She opened the floor to any questions in the document that Uberti already answered but someone wanted to follow up on.

BOE member Doria Linnetz raised her hand to comment first, noting several revised pages for the budget on their desk. She asked if they could talk through what the changes are, to which Director of Business and Finance Tanja Gouveia said the adjustments were all staffing related.

One example of the small tweaks, she said, was in paraeducator hours.

“In some cases, it was like a 0.003 difference [from what it needed to be], but we wanted to get it 100% on,” Gouveia said.

Gouveia said it was due to a rollover error on their part.

“It was just something that didn’t get updated ... and then in updating that, we noticed there were a couple of other tweaks we needed to make. And this was mostly to do with the 2024-25 budget, which rolled into 2025-26 and then into 2026-27,” Gouveia explained.

She said it unfortunately affected all the schools, special education, and actually one position in the central office as well.

Linnetz then had a follow-up question from the Google document, specifically regarding the Program for Adaptive Learning (PAL).

She asked if nine PAL students, who will be part of fourth grade classrooms next year, are currently part of third grade classrooms.

“Because you don’t see those numbers in the third grade right now,” Linnetz clarified.

Uberti said the nine students are currently a part of third grade classrooms. She explained she did not account for them in the budget because they did not account for them there before.

The reason they are requesting an additional staff member, Uberti said, is because of the impact it is currently having on the third grade classrooms. While the students are not in there all day long, she said some students are in there for significant amounts of time.

Linnetz then asked how much instruction PAL program students get from a general education teacher, noting it as a generalization since it depends on the student.

Uberti said it varies.

PAL program students all have a special education teacher because they all have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), according to Uberti. They all have a behavioral therapist (BT), and then a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA) that works with them as well.

“So some individual students’ direct instruct does come from their classroom teacher,” Uberti said. “It might not necessarily be their language arts [teacher], it might be their science or social studies or, in some cases, specials like Unified Arts.”

BOE member John Vouros asked how many additional adults are with the PAL student in the classroom.

Uberti said every student is accompanied throughout the whole school day, from the time they get off the bus until the time they get back on the bus to go home.

This significantly impacts not just the number of people in a classroom, but also the amount of needed staff. Uberti said this is because those BTs also have to have lunch and breaks. In turn, the district needs to have additional BTs in order to cover for those times, or for other times they may need to do additional training for the students.

The program generally has students coming and going “pretty frequently,” according to Uberti. They may not necessarily be going into the classroom where the general education students are, but Uberti said that may be because their inclusion time happened during the morning circle.

“So you see a lot of kids coming and going in the hallway because it’s very student dependent,” Uberti explained. “The goal [is] to increase their amount of time in the general education setting and their ability to interact with their typical peers.”

Clarifications

Linnetz saw the response in their shared Google document about the special education teacher who will be working with students who have IEPs. She said it seems like these are behaviorally driven IEPs, and asked how do they decide a special education teacher role is appropriate versus a BCBA.

Uberti said a BCBA would typically be working with special education students. The district attempted hiring a BCBA a couple years ago to work with general education students because there were students coming into school who were highly dysregulated but were not special education students.

“This means they had not gone through the identification process or they had not yet met the criteria to be identified,” Uberti explained. “So even though we had a general education BCBA, that is not typically the profile of the student that they work with. So that probably caused some confusion.”

Uberti also noted her recommendation of adding an elementary special education teacher, which was previously discussed at the BOE’s January 13 meeting.

Uberti said they already hired that person in January because they had a significant number of students, some who had not yet been identified and have since become identified, who were experiencing significant behavior dysregulation.

“It could be perceived that the benefit of the assistant principals wasn’t realized, [but] it actually really was. It was wonderful because we did have a high concentration at Hawley, and the team there was able to work through all of the appropriate steps in managing the students’ behavior,” Uberti said.

She continued by saying their goal is to have students be in the least restrictive environment and to help them manage their behaviors. This was something Uberti said the district struggled with in the past, mostly because they did not have the age appropriate support in place.

After working through everything, Uberti said there was great communication by Hawley staff, including Hawley Assistant Principal Alison Carmody, along with Director of Pupil Services Deborah Mailloux-Petersen.

At the appropriate time, Uberti said it became clear these students need more time out of their regular classroom and in order to appropriately instruct them, the district needed additional staff.

“So that’s why the person was hired,” Uberti said. “[They support] students who are identified ... not general education students.”

Math Interventionist

Plante noticed there were a few questions on the math interventionist in their shared document, and thought it would make sense to give a brief overview on how that position integrates.

Assistant Superintendent of Schools Frank Purcaro said the question was something along the lines of, “What are the reasons for the math interventionist?” or, “Why the lagging math scores.”

Purcaro believed that is a “multifaceted answer.” He said the COVID-19 pandemic certainly had an impact on the students currently in Newtown High School (NHS). He added that the district is seeing some gains in the lower grades for mathematics, and they hope to see these gains continue when those students reach the high school.

“But one thing I wanted to emphasize ... is that we do have a dedicated math support person for all the students in grades K-8, and then when they get to ninth grade, they lose that level of support,” Purcaro explained.

He said he thinks that is a major factor and wants to make sure those same students who are receiving support in eighth grade can have a continuation of it in ninth grade moving forward.

The math interventionist, Purcaro said, would be someone dedicated to reviewing that data, looking to where the gaps are for students, and determining if it is a curriculum or professional development issue. They would also work directly with students to track their progress.

“So that, inevitably, as we have the assessments each year, we have a measure to say, ‘Okay, we’re making gains in whatever area that there is a concern,’” Purcaro said.

BOE member Melissa Beylouni asked if the math interventionist would work within the preexisting math center at NHS, or if the math center would be for students struggling with a certain assignment.

Purcaro said these will be two different things. The math center will support students who need help on a particular assignment or need extra help. The interventionist, he said, is envisioned to provide more targeted support for students who have “some consistent gap in instruction and math over time that we know we need to backfill.”

“We look at math center as more immediate, there’s something going on in this particular unit, this particular lesson ... where we’re looking at the math interventionist as someone to deal with more long-term concern,” Purcaro explained.

Beylouni said the math center needs to be promoted more, not necessarily with students, but with parents.

“If they don’t know about it, they cannot tell their child [about it],” Beylouni said. “If parents don’t know about it, they can’t encourage their kids [to use it].”

Vouros asked how the math interventionist would interact with the students’ math teacher. Purcaro said the math interventionist will need to work in tandem with teachers.

“We’ll look at data, but we also want to know what’s taking place in the classroom. So we’ll be encouraging a lot of collaboration between the interventionist and the math teachers,” Purcaro explained.

He continued by saying they wanted to address as many students as they can, and think the role would start by supporting students in grades nine, ten, and eleven.

Additional Discussion

BOE member Chris Gilson asked about a new art teacher position at NHS, if they will teach classes as well, and how it will impact the different art courses in the high school.

Uberti said, as part of the reductions last year, the K-12 director of fine arts position was eliminated. However, Uberti said they recognized the need for a department chair given the complexity of the particular events at NHS alone, along with coordination, budgeting, and other tasks that go into the fine arts department.

Uberti said they unfortunately shortchanged themselves. While they budgeted for the stipend for a department chair, someone in that position works a reduced load in order to accomplish the tasks of a department chair.

“And we did not have the capacity to reduce the load of the teachers without adding a teaching position. There was some thought we might be able to repurpose a position, but that did not work out. We simply did not have the staffing,” Uberti explained.

Uberti said the fine arts department needs a department chair and, in order to ascertain one, they need an additional teaching position. The teacher will be able to cover the duties of a reduced teaching load, and potentially allow the school to increase their arts offerings.

Following that, BOE members felt as though they did not need to have the previously scheduled meeting on Thursday, January 29 to continue discussion of the proposal.

The BOE will reconvene on Tuesday, February 3 for any final discussion, along with a vote on budget adoption.

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.