NORWALK – It took back-to-back meetings, but the Board of Education Wednesday approved a school budget for 2025-26, ending two weeks of tempestuous debate.
The budget vote, which was unanimous, was delayed three times.
It first was postponed during the June 3 school board meeting, after an estimated 700 Norwalk parents and teachers railed against proposed cuts for more than four hours, and still not everyone got a chance to speak.
The discussion was continued to June 10 so more people could participate, but that meeting was canceled after Mayor Harry Rilling and State Sen. Bob Duff came up with a last-minute offer to add a total of $6 million to the school budget to cover a gaping shortfall. The offer came with conditions, and Superintendent Alexandra Estrella and school board Chair Diana Carpio said they needed time to review them.
The board was expected to vote on June 17, a meeting that drew a smaller but still raucous crowd. But board members said they wanted time to examine how Estrella had proposed spending the $6 million allocation from Duff and Rilling.
The next day, Wednesday, Rilling offered another $500,000 from city reserves. He said it was earmarked to spend on restoring three of four special education administrators whose jobs were set to be cut.
That – and the late date – were enough to convince school board members to approve the budget Wednesday evening.
“This is my fourth budget cycle and by far the most difficult,” board member Kara Nelson Baekey said during the meeting.
She and other members said they are unhappy that 19 positions will be eliminated. Some discussed delaying the budget vote for a fourth time.
“I wish we could do things differently, but it’s less than two weeks away from July 1, our legal deadline to vote on the reconciled budget,” Nelson Baekey said. “We as a board have spent most of the day today trying to once again save things that matter most to people. But we’re at an impasse, so I feel we must pass this tonight. It’s not right to continue this out and leave everyone hanging in limbo.”
Members said during the meeting that all but 19 of 80 school positions that were set to be cut have been reinstated, thanks to the additional $6.5 million in state and city funds. The restored positions include 12 music teachers, 11 high school teachers, seven paraeducators and seven school counselors.
Still, board member Mary Ellen Flaherty-Ludwig, a former teacher, said she would vote for the budget with a heavy heart.
“My goal from the original infusion (of money) from the state and the city … was to return all 80 people who had been cut,” Flaherty-Ludwig said. “If I thought delaying the vote would produce the possibility that more teachers would be reinstated, I would. But I think this is where we are. We’ve been able to get more than 60 back, but my heart is breaking for those others that were cut, who were hard-working, high-performing professionals.”
School administrators did not explain which 19 positions will go. Estrella said during the meeting that her office “will work with the different bargaining units” to identify them. A statement from Norwalk Public Schools released after the meeting said the reductions will follow the terms of union contracts and will be based on “certification and seniority, not individual performance.”
Cutting jobs is “a dismal thought,” board member Janine Randolph said.
“This is not a perfect document … but I don’t think we can go another week with an unreconciled budget,” Randolph said. “Teachers can’t go another week not knowing if they have a job.”
Fellow board member Ashley Gulyas agreed.
“I woke up today ready to push this to next week, but I understand that would give very little time to reinstate teachers, and likely wouldn’t change very much,” Gulyas said. “I will vote yes, but I’m deeply saddened that we can’t find a way to reinstate all of those who are being cut.”
Several school board members said the budget cycle this year was “a roller coaster ride.”
It began at the start of 2025, when Estrella requested a large 9.7 percent increase, citing rising costs for special education, employee health care, salaries and benefits, plus greater demand for student support services.
The school board approved her request, but city officials concerned about the tax hike that would result cut the increase by well more than half, to 4 percent.
That left Estrella with a $13.2 million shortfall that she at first proposed to resolve by eliminating as many as 130 positions, including 60 teachers; reducing music and physical education programs; cutting the number of school counselors, social workers, paraeducators, secretaries and administrators; and increasing class sizes.
It set off an uproar from parents and teachers, and led to the vote delays and funding offer from Duff and Rilling.
The senator and the mayor said that if they were to give the money, the school board would have to restore an elementary music program along with teacher, paraeducator and administrator jobs; take up discussion of Estrella’s contract extension next year instead of this year; and make $2 million in cuts that Duff and Rilling approved.
Estrella and Carpio said it raised questions about whether Duff and Rilling were usurping the autonomy and independence of the Board of Education, an agency of the state.
On Wednesday, however, the board accepted the money and agreed to the conditions set by Duff and Rilling.
The two targeted what they called non-student-facing positions, such as administrators in Central Office. The statement from the school district said 23 Central Office positions were cut.
“While these changes were not immediately visible to most families, they impacted important services such as school improvement planning, data analysis, purchasing, and special education coordination — all of which play a critical role in supporting teaching and learning,” the district’s statement reads.
There was another note of foreboding.
The district’s statement made a point of saying that the $6.5 million appropriation from the city and the state was a onetime thing. And during Tuesday’s meeting, the district’s chief financial officer, Lunda Asmani, was asked what the starting point will be for the 2026-27 budget.
Asmani said that if the starting point includes a 4 percent budget increase, which is what the city approved for the Board of Education this year, plus another $6 million appropriation, “we’ll be in a better position.”
But, Asmani said, “if next year’s budget is based on 4 percent alone, we will be in the same position as this year.”