Beacon Hill must do all that it can to protect public education from federal funding cuts

Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy issued the following statement on the FY26 budget proposal released by the Senate Committee on Ways and Means:

Beacon Hill must do all that it can to protect public education – from preK to college – from federal funding cuts initiated by the Trump administration. Our students cannot be pawns in a perverse game of coercion meant to advance a right-wing agenda that threatens fundamental human rights as well as academic freedom.

The budget proposal released today by the Senate Committee on Ways and Means demonstrates strong support for public education but still leaves our students and educators vulnerable in some aspects of preserving quality and access to the schools and colleges our communities deserve.

Our concerns go beyond what is happening in Washington, D.C. Here in Massachusetts, too many cities and towns are experiencing fiscal crises tied to the constraints imposed by Proposition 2 ½ and inadequate state funding. Public schools and municipal services are facing cuts in communities across the state.

In a positive step toward protecting education equity, the Senate joined the House in recognizing the need to boost minimum state aid to communities to $150 per student, one of the MTA’s longstanding goals.

We support the Senate’s recommended investments in public higher education, especially its spending proposal on scholarships, which boosts student aid by $20 million over current levels and the amounts in the budget proposals submitted by the House and Governor Healey. Nevertheless, our public colleges and universities are struggling to attract and retain highly qualified staff and faculty, as salaries are not competitive at Massachusetts’ community colleges, state universities and the UMass system. Administrators and unions alike are calling for greater investment in the workers who power public higher education.

The budget proposal presented by the Senate Committee on Ways and Means does preserve valuable advances we have made in public education, from making breakfast and lunch free for all students in public schools to having tuition-free community colleges, and much more affordable four-year public colleges and universities for working-class students.

And we urge legislators to use Fair Share Amendment funds – which continue to outpace even our own predictions – to mount a robust defense of our state’s commitment to high-quality, equitable and accessible public education from preK to college.

The final spending package approved for FY26, however, can’t simply have our public schools and colleges treading water if we hope to strengthen our communities and economy in the face of attacks by the Trump administration.

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