Aldermen grapple with next steps on school budget following hours of public comment

MANCHESTER, N.H. – A total of 60 people spoke at a Special Meeting of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais’ Fiscal Year 2026 Manchester School District Budget, with almost all of them speaking with frustration regarding the gap between the mayor’s budget and the Manchester Board of School Committee’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 School District budget.

The stream of public comment stemmed largely from the prior day’s Board of School Committee meeting, where Manchester School District leadership laid out likely reductions that would need to be made if the Board of School Committee’s recommended $246,050,206 figure versus the mayor’s proposed $236,499,925 figure.

Students, teachers and parents talked for over two hours in opposition to the mayor’s figure, with one example coming from Heather Lonergan, a paraprofessional teacher at Jewett Street Elementary School and a classmate of Ruais from the Salem High School class of 2004.

Lonergan came before the board feeling that she, like the mayor, aimed to serve the community.

“In my job as a para, I often see kids when they are struggling. Whether those struggles are academic, social, or emotional, I do my best to guide them, help them learn to cope with their environment and achieve. I’m able to do this because I am supported by an amazing staff that provides a safe and productive learning environment,” said Lonergan. “If class sizes were to increase to proposed levels and staff was reduced, the children that would suffer the consequences would be the ones that I work with. They work so hard to do their best in less-than-ideal conditions for them, and the last thing they need is one more hurdle to leap over.”

Katie Howe, one of Lonergan’s colleagues at Jewett Street now in her 23^rd year as an educator and a parent of three daughters currently or formerly in the district, was another one of the voices.

Manchester School District staff are special,” she said. “My colleagues at Jewett, the brave souls who’ve taught and mentored my daughters, and everyone in between. Mayor Ruais and members of the Board, it is very important to me that you know that.”

Several members of the Board of School Committee also testified, and a letter on behalf of the board was submitted. (see below) Although three members of the board voted against the letter on Monday night, every member of the board except for Ruais signed onto the letter that was submitted.

Among those 60 individuals, there was only one individual who did not support the Board of School Committee’s figure: former Alderman and Board of School Committee member Rich Girard.

Girard, who also spoke during the public comment session of the regularly scheduled Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting in addition to the special meeting, felt that Ruais’ figures, as well as those of the school district, were disingenuous and that the final figure approved by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen for the district should be lower than the mayor’s figure given decreasing enrollment and accounting issues in the Board of School Committee’s proposed budget. Additionally, he also felt that more due diligence was needed with the city budget as well.

“There will never be enough money until you reign (the school district) in, you have to change how things work,” he said during public comment of the regular meeting.

School District leaders provided the Board of Mayor and Aldermen with a recap of how they came to the recommendation that they provided and was ultimately approved by the Board of School Committee during the regularly scheduled meeting.

FILE_6939Download

Alderman At-Large Joseph Kelly Levasseur spoke with frustration over several individuals during the special meeting their lack of understanding over the nuance in the budget process, stating that it was “bad messaging” to recommend some of the changes such as once again charging high school students $10 a week to use school buses after teachers obtained salary and cost of living increases through collective bargaining.

“You rally these people up, they come up here and they don’t know what they’re saying,” said Levasseur.

He went as far to say that school leaders “bamboozled” the commenters, a term that Ward 3 Alderman Pat Long too umbrage with.

“All the people who came here to speak, none of them were ‘bamboozled’”, said Long. “They came here and gave their reality.”

Ward 5 Alderman Anthony Sapienza criticized Ruais for not providing his own set of recommended reductions to get to his figure, instead forcing school district leaders to provide that set of reductions instead. Ruais responded that his figure was one step in an iterative discussion process between the district and the Board of Mayor and Aldermen. Following the information heard on Monday and Tuesday night, he said he could support a final figure that would remove reductions to the transportation budget, athletics budget and attritional teaching position adjustments. Ward 8 Alderman Ed Sapienza also responded saying that it was not necessary for the mayor to provide any details given that it is not his role to craft line items in the budget, referring to Tuesday’s process as a “kabuki theater” that had become common in recent years.

Additional dialogue on the board is expected in upcoming weeks, with the final budget figure required by June 30.

Later in the meeting, Ward 6 Alderman Crissy Kantor made a motion to put forward a charter amendment before the voters this fall to make the school district a department of the city, as it once was several decades ago.

Kantor felt the school district’s spending required the move, following concerns she made earlier in the meeting about high legal spending by the district as well as concerns about their usage of adequacy aid and their compliance with federal education regulations.

The proposal met opposition from Long and Anthony Sapienza, who said that the Aldermen would need to educate themselves much more thoroughly if they were given more authority over the school district’s budget beyond their current authority to set the budget’s bottom line.

“We need to be careful, we couldn’t blame (the Board of School Committee) anymore if we do this,” said Sapienza regarding claims from some Aldermen that the Board of School Committee has acted irresponsibly regarding their budget requests.

Given the June 3 deadline for any charter amendment proposals to be submitted to the New Hampshire Attorney Generals’ Office and a special meeting for public comment prior to that deadline, Kantor’s motion specified a full board vote on bringing forward the measure at the Board of Mayor and Aldermen’s next meeting in May, with wording crafted by city staff for that on what the charter amendment proposal would be on the ballot.

That motion failed on an 8-6 vote, with opposition coming from Long, Antony Sapienza, Ward 4 Alderwoman Christine Fajardo, Ward 2 Alderman Dan Goonan, Ward 9 Alderman Jim Burkush, Ward 10 Alderman Bill Barry, Alderman At-Large Dan O’Neill and Ward 1 Alderman Chris Morgan, with Morgan stating that he needed more time to learn about the issue.