NTA eBulletin: February 23, 2026

Mike Zilles
Feb 24
8 min read

Question of the Week (new)

I will report the results of the last question of the week next week, and add another question then.

Anna Nolin's February 22 "Inside Voice" Email: A Reponse (new)

The Pace and Efficacy of Change

This document is a response to Anna Nolin’s February 22 “Inside Voice” email to staff.

I have divided my response to Nolin’s email to staff into two parts:

Part one is her response to concerns you voiced in our NTA member survey. I appreciate that she gave the survey this attention, and did so quite respectfully.

Part two, which I will address below, is an explanation of the current budget freeze.

First, Anna acknowledges that the pace of change has been very stressful and summarizes NTA member concerns:

Many staff believe in the direction of the district but feel the pace and volume of work has been intense.
There is a desire for clearer prioritization and predictability.
Some educators want stronger clarity about how decisions are made and how input shapes outcomes.
Operational realities: coverage, absences, competing demands have created strain. I, too, am worried about this.

Members reasonably ask: If these changes demand so much of us, are they clearly improving outcomes for students?

Anna’s answer is yes. She argues that the district is making meaningful progress and encourages us to stay the course. She supports that claim with data drawn from five documents:

The claims she makes come from five documents, most authored by Maria Kolbe; some co-authored by Katie Hogue and/or Anna Nolin.

She is not wrong that there are areas of genuine progress. But when these documents are read carefully, the picture is more mixed than the summary suggests.

What the districtwide STAR memos actually show

Overall performance in math and literacy remains high:

The Winter STAR Literacy memo reports 74.4% of students at or above benchmark.
The Winter STAR Math memo reports 73% at or above benchmark.

Newton continues to be a high-performing district.

However, districtwide growth is mostly typical — not systemwide “gap-closing” acceleration.

Both memos define an SGP (Student Growth Percentile) of 60 or higher as the level associated with closing gaps. District averages are largely below 60. That means growth is generally typical to moderately above median — but not accelerating at a rate that would close achievement gaps at scale.

That distinction matters.

Subgroup disparities remain substantial

The literacy memo reports:

Black students: 49.4% at/above benchmark
Latino students: 55%
Students with IEPs: 39.2%

The math memo reports:

Black students: 37% at/above benchmark

Latino students: 48.1%
Students with IEPs: 35.7%

These are significant gaps. The memos describe them as urgent and persistent. What the data does not show is longitudinal evidence that current initiatives are narrowing those gaps districtwide.

The MTSS data shows real progress — but within limits

The Path to Reliable MTSS memo reports strong short-term growth for students receiving specialist-led elementary intervention:

Math SGP: 67.3
Literacy SGP: 71.2

It also reports:

62% of math-flagged students no longer flagged by winter
54% of literacy-flagged students no longer flagged
Fewer initial special education evaluations compared to prior year totals

Those are meaningful short-term gains.

However:

The intervention cohort consists of regular education students (not students already on IEPs).
The memo does not disaggregate the group by race, ethnicity, ELL status, or METCO status.
It reflects fall-to-winter growth only.
It is limited to elementary grades.
The cohort is small compared to the total number of students tested districtwide.

This is evidence of program-level success. It is not yet evidence of districtwide gap closure.

Where the interpretation goes further than the data

The documents support some positive conclusions. But they do not, in technical terms, prove:

That curriculum coherence is the primary driver of observed gains.
That subgroup gaps are narrowing at scale.
That districtwide acceleration is underway.
That elementary return-on-investment results guarantee secondary success.
That the current pace of reform is validated by systemwide outcome data.

Those claims require inferences beyond what these documents directly demonstrate.

Taken together, these documents show real strengths in our district and promising early results in targeted elementary intervention. That progress deserves recognition. At the same time, districtwide growth remains mostly typical, subgroup disparities remain significant, and secondary students below benchmark are not yet accelerating at gap-closing rates. Promising intervention data is not the same as districtwide transformation.

When changes place significant strain on educators, it is reasonable to ask whether the scale of the claims matches the scale of the evidence. Members are not resisting improvement. We are asking for clarity, sustainability, and careful precision about what the data does — and does not — demonstrate.

Budget Shortfall

I am not prepared to offer a substantive analysis of Anna’s email regarding the budget freeze at this time. Here is the document that was sent to administrators outlining the freeze. I look forward to reviewing the forthcoming “colleague clarification letter” referenced in her message, which is intended to provide greater clarity regarding substitutes, healthcare plans, aide staffing, IEP service delivery, and hiring review processes during the current fiscal reduction phase. That additional detail will be important.

What I can say is that the structure of this deficit feels familiar.

In February 2022, the district announced a deficit of nearly $2 million attributed to underestimated costs in salaries, health insurance, substitutes (referred to at that time as contracted services), and utilities. That announcement also came during the second year of a three-year contract, with negotiations scheduled to begin the following year.

We are again in the second year of a three-year contract, with negotiations approaching next year, and we are again facing a mid-year deficit tied to similar cost categories.

I am not drawing conclusions from that parallel. But the repetition is notable, and it is reasonable for members to want transparency and clarity about how these recurring shortfalls are projected and managed.

MTA Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates Forum

On Wednesday, the Newton Teachers Association hosted a forum for the candidates for MTA President and Vice President. Five of the six candidates were able to attend. We recorded the session to share with our members. Dean Robinson was unable to attend the forum, but he has posted video replies to our questions, which we have edited into the video of the forum. Here is the video.

The deadline for submitting nominations to be an MTA Annual Meeting Delegate or a member of the NTA Negotiations Team is this Friday. The vote for the next President and Vice President of the MTA happens at the Annual Meeting. Only registered delegates can vote.

NTA Quality of Life and Working Conditions Survey

NTA Quality of Life and Working Conditions Survey results can be found by clicking here. These full survey results contain the redacted feedback you provided in open responses.

NTA Quality of Life and Working Conditions Survey results disaggregated into elementary/preschool, middle school, and high school. (I combined NECP with elementary because it would be too easy to identify individual NECP members if the preschool were disaggregated.)

Sharing the eBulletin with the Larger Community

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Please share this link with members of the community whom you think would appreciate receiving the eBulletin.

Labor Relations

Workers Compensation and Work Outside the Regular School Year

On opening day, I recounted to members the story of an Extended School Year (ESY) Behavior Therapist who was injured on the job and received no workers' compensation benefits for her injury.

As most of you now know, the City of Newton opted out of providing workers' compensation insurance to its educational employees decades ago, taking advantage of a loophole in the law.

Because of this, in 2019 the NTA negotiated contractual provisions to protect members who suffer on the job injuries:

Employees injured on the job have access to the sick leave bank to cover 100% of the costs of any time spent out of work because of the injury, up to a maximum of 3 years (the remainder of the school year when the injury happened plus 2 more full years).
Employees have their out-of-pocket medical expenses covered by the district.

I have been working with Anna Nolin to rectify this by ensuring that the contractual provisions for on the job injuries we negotiated in 2019 are extended to cover summer NPS ESY employees. It seemed, in October, that we would easily reach an agreement. But no.

To date, we have not, and unless we reach an agreement immediately: (1) The employee injured in the summer of 2025 will not be compensated and (2) current NPS employees will not be protected if they are injured on the job during the summer (or, for that matter, for anything they do outside the regular school day, including advising clubs, coaching sports, etc.)

This is not hard to fix: we simply need to agree to a provision in the Units A, B, and C contracts that extend their contractual protections for on the job injuries to work done outside of the regular school year or day.

The unwillingness to resolve this problem highlights why we all need the NTA. Without our advocacy, the district historically has done as little as possible to protect and provide for its employees. The failure to provide workers compensation protections to summer employees not covered by the contract is but one example. Here are some others. Note that this list is not comprehensive:

Summer pay is significantly less than contractual rates during the school year (except for BTs who worked during the school year as well.)
Long term substitutes who work 21 to 89 days have been paid approximately $175 per day since at least 2010, probably longer. That amounts to a 1/3 reduction in their actual, inflation adjusted pay rate over 15 years.
Outsourcing NPS bargaining unit work. First, cafeteria workers; then the attempt to outsource custodial work; currently, Unit D substitute and unit C work.

The NTA will not abandon this struggle to protect our members from on the job injury losses, even if we are not able to win the battle until we enter negotiations.

Resolution of Bargaining Issue with School Committee

Last week we reached a bargaining agreement with the new Newton School Committee Negotiations Team (Alicia Piedalue, Jason Bhardwaj, Ben Schlesinger). The issue was how NTA member were compensated if their flights were cancelled at the end of winter break because of the coup in Venezuela.

These members were required to use their remaining personal days and then their other days to cover any days they were absent.

We reached an agreement that if members in this group need to use a personal day later in the school year, they will simply have to inform HR, and, with no questions asked, they will be allowed to use a sick day to cover their absence, up to the number of personal days they had remaining before they returned after the Venezuela coup.

This agreement may seem small in the light of the many, many issues we face as educators and as union members, but it was the first bargaining we did with the SC's new team, and they agreed with us that is essential that Newton Public Schools employees feel protected by the district.

Bravo to this new Negotiations Committee! While this was indeed a small issue, the stated principle behind the agreement speaks volumes. As our new NTA Negotiations Team forms, we look forward to working with the school committee team in the upcoming negotiations for a successor agreement to our current contracts.

Recording absences in ESS

Building administrators, including principals, assistant principals, department heads, and others, have been told that they must reject sick day requests unless employees use the drop down menu to list the reason for the absence. This puts these school leaders in an awkward position, where they have to be the enforcer who rejects your contractual paid absences.

That said, the information that HR is asking for is necessary. Being absent for a personal illness is different, contractually, from being absent to care for a family member. Here is how you record the "reason" for you absence when you or someone in your family is ill. Ignore the (optional) choice...it is not optional. Stating that is is seems to be a platform limitation.