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Winchester’s schools are ready to open on Sept. 2. That’s when students in grades K-12 report for their first day of the new academic year.
“We’re ready to open,” Superintendent of Schools Dr. Frank Hackett said. “It wasn’t an easy year last year and it was tough to get to this point. But, we have great staffing and our numbers are good as far as enrollment. People are excited to be back.”
Hackett said staff will report on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1. On Sept. 2, students in grades K-5 have an early release at 11:25 a.m. K-12 students will also report on Sept. 3 for all-day sessions, with Kindergarten once again releasing at 11:25 a.m.
There will be no school on either Sept. 4 or Sept. 7 before all students return for a full day on Sept. 8.
Hackett said there are no surprises in this year’s school calendar, except that Labor Day is later than usual.
Staffing changes
Since the failure of an $11.5 million override in March, school officials have been working to cut $3 million from the budget. Some measures have included raising athletic fees, reducing 32 teachers and cutting $1 from the central office.
Hackett said since the cuts, the schools have seen several students with special needs move into the district, which means having to hire paraprofessionals. Additionally, three classrooms have been put back due to higher enrollment than expected.
“I knew we were making reductions on a razor’s edge with the numbers we had,” Hackett said. “I felt we needed to do it and we rolled the dice on it.”
Hackett said the reduction of a fourth-grade at the Vinson-Owen and fourth and fifth-grade classrooms at Lynch were the ones that ironically needed to be re-added.
Hackett said parents will see higher class sizes than they’ve been used to in past years. He said the highest class sizes are between 22 and 23 students and are at Vinson-Owen (fifth grade, 23 students); Lincoln (fourth grade, 22 students); and Ambrose (second grade, 22 students).
“Some of those numbers are due to localized population bubbles,” the superintendent said. “Neighborhood schools are hard to distribute equally.”
For example, he said one of Lincoln’s second grade classrooms has 21 students while a third grade at the school has only 16 students and a fourth-grade has 22 students.
“That’s all in the same school, that’s what makes it a challenge,” he said.
He said the district has also had several new registrants on a wait list since April in order to see where enrollment fell. Those students have since been re-distributed to schools across the district, with transportation provided to them.
At other schools, Hackett said, numbers are down. For example, Muraco’s enrollment is down from 296 as of Oct. 1, 2025 to 284 at opening in September.
“That’s a lot,” Hackett said. “When we have three class sections for reach grade across the district, except in Kindergarten, we’re only carrying two sections of each at that school.”
Enrollment is also down at the McCall Middle School by 40 students, which Hackett said was one of the reasons for a reduction of a sixth-grade team of four to five teachers.
Winchester High School, he added, is looking good across the board, with no new growth or reductions.
Hackett said the district has yet to figure out what the net is for enrollment. He said several schools have new registrations: 37 at Lynch, 14 at Ambrose, 36 at McCall and 24 at WHS. But, he added, students have also withdrawn so the district won’t have official numbers until October 2026.
So what are the biggest staffing challenges this year?
“The biggest difference will be in the central office,” Hackett said. “We did end up taking $1 million out of that.”
And, class sizes will be higher.
“They are well within range, but it will feel like a lot more for teachers and parents because we’ve been able to keep them smaller up until this point,” Hackett said.
Additionally, “about two dozen new staff join the district this year, roughly 15 of them teachers, specialists, and administrators,” including “a new special education supervisor, new McCall and high school teachers, and specialists including two school psychologists and an occupational therapist. Overall staffing is close to flat year over year.”
Notable additions include:
• Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education Dr. Heidi Paisner, who was appointed by the School Committee in July 2026 and replaces the retiring Laurie Kirby.
• New Winchester High School Director of Athletics Wayne Puglisi, who succeeds Marc Arria, who stepped down after 12 years.
• McCall Assistant Principal Whitney Day
New programs for school year
Once again, the failure of the override has put some programming for secondary level students at the middle and high schools on the backburner. Hackett said there have been no significant reductions at the high school.
However, this is the year that Winchester fully rolls out the new elementary literacy program, Arts & Letters, for all students in grades K-5.
“That’s huge,” Hackett said. “I feel really good about that.”
Hackett said so many people in every elementary school, from teachers to parents to staffers were involved in piloting the program. And, he added, there has been a lot of training for teachers and there will be support available from those who participated in last year’s testing.
The program costs about $700,000 and will need to be updated year-over-year for an approximate $200,000. Hackett said those costs will be absorbed into the school budget.
The program is a “knowledge-building, Science of Reading-aligned program that replaces a school-by-school approach with one cohesive curriculum.”
Hackett said the point person on the program is Elementary Literacy Coordinator Melissa Newell, Paisner and the elementary principals.
Additionally, the schools are adding the following programs:
- DESE Tutoring Grant /Ignite Reading: WPS again received the state’s DESE tutoring grant and will partner with Ignite Reading to support first-grade readers, building on a successful first year. Ignite provides daily 15-minute, one-to-one virtual tutoring in foundational reading skills, grounded in the Science of Reading.
- EZ Arrival bus app: New bus-tracking app replacing EZ A2B. Existing parent accounts carry over automatically, so no new registration is needed. Available now, with parent guides in English and Spanish.
Facilities changes
What else will parents and student see when schools open again? Hackett said there have been some facilities changes.
For example, central office staff have been moved to the Parkhurst School, where WinCAM is also now located.
“It’s big for them and it’s big for us,” Hackett said, of the new addition.
Ambrose students will see new pavers at the school entrance when they return and it will be cooler at the Lincoln, where a new AC is being replaced and is expected to be fully installed by October. WHS is having failing topside concrete surface repaired. That project, currently underway, is being overseen by the Educational Facilities Planning and Building Committee.
As far as building a new Muraco, Hackett said Winchester is still working with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). He expected to meet with MSBA representatives about enrollment to see how many students a new school will house.
The district was invited by the MSBA into the eligibility period in December 2025 and Winchester accepted in March 2026. Once the enrollment report is finished, the town and MSBA will move onto the feasibility study stage.
For more information about Winchester Public Schools opening, such as busing or to download a new school calendar, click here.
Nell Escobar Coakley has been a journalist for more than 30 years. She is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Gotta Know Medford and editor of Winchester News. She can be reached at editor@winchesternews.org.
