Ellen Holmes
2021 President
Welcome to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. Our mission is to achieve excellence in school leadership through advocacy, training and service. We are pleased to offer a rich array of publications, resources, events and conferences to support the valuable work that our members do.
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Day on the Hill is MASC's annual legislative advocacy day. Typically, this event brings hundreds of school committee members, superintendents and student leaders to the State House in Boston to meet with the executive and legislative leadership as well as local senators and representatives. This event is an increasingly critical moment for MASC members to advance the message of the value of public education and ensure that legislators and other key decision/policy makers understand the issues and challenges that you confront and that they can support.
On April 14, 2021, the Massachusetts House Ways & Means Committee released its FY2022 Budget recommendations. Among the recommendations from the House Ways and Means Committee is a significant increase in Chapter 70 funding, as well as funding for the Special Education Circuit Breaker and Regional Transportation. MASC General Counsel Stephen Finnegan has released an overview and brief analysis of the proposal as it relates to public schools in a new Legislative Bulletin.
As noted by MASC President Ellen Holmes in her testimony earlier this month before the Joint Committee on Ways and Means, MASC this year will advocate for:
MASC President Ellen Holmes will be addressing the Joint Legislative Committee on Ways and Means with MASC’s fiscal and legislative priorities. Her testimony, along with a list of some of our legislative priorities to date, is available below. We will be providing more information and adding legislative goals as the session moves along since there are many bills related to education that are still being studied.
DESE Commissioner Riley has shared updated guidance from DESE on In-Person Learning and Student Learning Time Requirements. The updates are available for download using the following links:
The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education was called back into session at 2 pm on Friday, March 5 for a meeting to discuss Commissioner Riley's request for authority to decide when hybrid and remote options for education would no longer count towards a district's time on learning. The agenda, including the proposed regulation change, can be found here.
While the livestream can be found here, the Department suffered from technical difficulties such that a portion of public comment at the beginning of the meeting was not broadcast. Apologies for names that were missed.