Public can weigh in on proposed $246M Manchester school budget at hearing

Feb. 19—Manchester School Superintendent Jennifer Chmiel has gone through the district's Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal line by line and item by item.
The proposal has the unanimous backing of a school board subcommittee. Now it's time for the public to weigh in.
A public hearing on the Manchester School District's $246 million budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2026 — as well as the FY '26 School Food and Nutrition Budget of $6.3 million and the FY '25 Capital Improvements Projects (CIP) of $6.6 million will be held Thursday at 6 p.m. in the large conference room on the third floor in the district offices at West High School.
According to Chmiel, the budget supports 11,865 Manchester School District students, as well as services at charter and parochial schools, and supports several areas of student success, including educational programming, hiring and retention, improved measures of college and career readiness, improved graduation rates and the start of priority one facilities projects.
"We're approaching (the budget process) understanding the level of scrutiny on public (education), but I think the team and I go back and say we've got to do the best for our district, and we're doing good stuff — good things are starting to happen," Chmiel said. "We're seeing those outcomes start to go in the right direction. So while that scrutiny is there, we kind of feel strongly that we just need to keep pushing the ball up the hill. and do right by kids."
The Fiscal Year 2026 school budget proposal contains $112.1 million in salaries (a $10.7 million increase over last year), $11.3 million in transportation costs (a $3.7 million decrease from last year due to the transition to in-house home-to-school busing), $11.7 million in debt service and $9.7 million to cover a $320,000 increase in costs for city services, including a 3% increase in costs for the Aramark custodial services contract and 5% increase for school resource officers from Manchester police.
The $6.6 million in CIP projects includes $300,000 for playground replacement, $1.2 million for the purchase of 11 buses and $250,000 for information technology network infrastructure costs.
Chmiel said this is the fourth budget she and Karen DeFrancis, executive director of finance for the Manchester School District, have worked on together.
"We've got a better system, we've got a different eye, looking for efficiencies, pulling building-level leaders and department heads in and really scrutinizing," Chmiel said. "What we do now is we bring in principals, we bring in the department heads, and we go line by line by line. We're really in the weeds with them, but that gives us a different footing of what the budget really looks like. So much of it's staffing, that if we can get really solid in those numbers, we're in a good space when we present that budget. I think it's 68 or 69% of our budget right now is staffing, so it's a huge chunk of our work."
Chmiel said the district is starting to see enrollment numbers stabilize.
"We saw some of the sending districts pull out over the years, and then we saw a dip right around COVID," Chmiel said. "We're seeing that number starting to come back and stabilize a bit. Last time I looked, right before last week's (school board) meeting, we were up by 14 kids. Not a lot, but it's still 14 kids going in the right direction, not reverse. We talked this morning — we're still seeing enrollments coming in."
Staffing costs include salary lines of $203,359 for Chmiel, $155,017 for Assistant Superintendent Nicole Doherty, $128,068 for Athletic Director Christine Pariseau Telge and $119,911 for Amadou Hamady, executive director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.
Chmiel's salary is not the highest in New Hampshire, even though Manchester is the state's largest school district. Her salary falls within the median range of average salaries nationwide.
"We're not the highest, we're not the lowest," Chmiel said. "What's the turnover of superintendents? How often are we seeing them flip? There's some value to the district to have someone sitting for longer than two years. We saw that cycle in the past, of people kind of just rotating through here."
Following Thursday's public hearing and discussion by the full Board of School Committee, the proposed FY '26 school budget will be sent to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen for consideration.

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