Friend, I have some very exciting news! 

No no no, it's not about our state legislature actually passing policies to improve the lives of Bay Staters. Since January, our full-time legislature has passed one (1!) statewide policy bill, for a total of seven (7) this legislative session. Major priorities like housing, climate, immigration, education, healthcare, criminal justice reform, labor rights, etc. are sitting without action or stalled out in conference committee. 

There are just 12 weeks left until the end of formal sessions: the deadline for bills to be passed by both chambers and moved to conference committee. Nevertheless, as Massterlist put it, "another week of light sessions showed the branch leaders aren't feeling much pressure to act." Both House and Senate clocked exactly 20 minutes in session this week, acting on local bills. Yawn! The sense of urgency we're feeling still hasn't pierced Beacon Hill's golden dome. 

But I promised good news! Yes, state leaders have stood by while the Trump administration attacks our immigrant neighbors, our scientific institutions, our climate progress, and our livelihoods. It's made accountability at the state level even more critical—and with it, our mission of informing and empowering constituents. At Act on Mass, we're feeling a strong sense of urgency, and acting on it. So, we're staffing up!

I'm thrilled to announce that we've hired a part-time Organizing Director, Isabel Harper, who will take leadership of our grassroots organizing and volunteer engagement. We've got big plans to take our mission on the road this summer, gathering signatures for public records law, knocking doors for endorsed candidates, and tabling in key districts. With Isabel on board, I'm really excited for what we'll be able to accomplish! 

Our current Digital Media Intern, Oscar, will also be a lead organizer for our grassroots work this summer. Before he switches job descriptions, he's sharing a blog for this week's Scoop based on deep research about education funding in our state. 

Read on for a personal intro from Isabel, and to answer Oscar's question: "Massachusetts is No Longer First in Education. What Happened?" I'm so lucky to work with such an amazing team!

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Introducing Act on Mass' new organizing director, Isabel Harper!

Hello, Act on Mass community! My name is Isabel Harper, and I’m honored to introduce myself as the new Organizing Director.

You’ll be hearing from me from time to time, so I’d love to share a little bit about myself. I began my grassroots advocacy journey in my home-state of Tennessee, pushing for common-sense firearm reform as a member of Students Demand Action. Since then, I’ve worked with The Conservation Law Foundation, Just Zero, and in the Vermont State Senate. Through these experiences, I fell in love with organizing in New England, but also became deeply concerned by how counterintuitive and convoluted the legislative process in Massachusetts is in practice.

My first organizing experience in Massachusetts was with the proposed bottle bill expansion at The Conservation Law Foundation. This campaign was my first time working on popularlegislation that has turned into a decades-long struggle due to a lack of inertia, corporate influence, and concentrated power on Beacon Hill. Since moving to Somerville in June 2024, I, along with a group of dynamic and fiery fellow volunteers, founded a joint Indivisible and Progressive Mass chapter called True North Action Alliance Boston. I also proudly serve on the Board of Directors for Just Zero, a national nonprofit advancing just and equitable zero-waste legislation.

I graduated from Bennington College in 2024 with a dual focus in Political Science and Environmental Studies. My research at Bennington centered on a central question: If international actors agreed to address climate impacts for those most affected, what would effective reforms look like in practice? I was excited to bring this idea as a guiding principle to my organizing work in my new home of Massachusetts. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that climate legislation painstakingly crafted by advocates dies every session behind closed doors, blocked by private interests and entrenched power structures. As the birthplace of American democracy, I believe Massachusetts can (and should!) seize on our unique opportunity to implement model legislation for the whole country.

I, like many of you I’m sure, feel particularly passionately about a few specific issue areas. But for me, especially as the strength of our national democracy is being challenged daily, caring about good lawmaking is caring about the climate, or immigration, or housing, or the million other issues that need our support. We deserve accountable, transparent representation, and as the third largest democratic supermajority in the country it is confounding that we’re not there yet. But clearly, I’m always up for a challenge. I cannot wait to work towards Act on Mass’s mission in collaboration with all residents of the Commonwealth, and certainly with all of the awe-inspiring advocates on this email list!

I currently split my time between serving as Act on Mass’s Organizing Director and working as a preschool teacher. Every day, I am inspired to help create a Massachusetts that the children in my classroom will be proud to call home, a place where they feel empowered to participate fully in a free and fair democracy.

I’m so proud to join the Act on Mass team and contribute to this important work. You’ll be hearing more from me very soon, and I look forward to connecting with you all!

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A new blog post from Act on Mass' Digital Media intern, Oscar Gillette! Oscar's interest in local politics began in School Committee campaigns and education budget fights in his hometown of Andover. He studies history and political science at American University, and he loves the show Survivor. 

Massachusetts is No Longer First in Education. What Happened?

Bay Staters have long taken pride in our state's leadership on public education. However, World Population Review’s 2026 public education ranking puts Massachusetts at third, behind New York and Connecticut. That website now ranks us behind New York and Connecticut. On the other popular education ranking site, US News and World Report, Massachusetts has fallen all the way to fifth, although that site considers pre-k and higher ed, instead of just public K-12 schools. Regardless of which methodology you prefer, the story is the same: Massachusetts’ public education has gotten worse relative to its peers. The answer may lie in a fiscal crisis experienced by municipalities across the Commonwealth.  

In October of 2025, the Massachusetts Municipal Alliance put out their Perfect Storm Report, highlighting the historic convergence of factors putting pressure on municipal budgets. That year saw a historic number of education budget deficits, program cuts, and layoffs. What is happening to cause this fiscal crisis, what effect is it having on educational outcomes, and what can the legislature do about it?

In Massachusetts, each school district is funded by a patchwork of federal, state, and municipal governments. State education funding is mostly given out through what is called Chapter 70 aid. Chapter 70 of the Massachusetts General Laws governs state education aid to public school districts. It establishes a minimum amount that a school district needs to operate, determines how much each municipal government is mandated to contribute based on their capacity, and provides the difference through state aid. The money is distributed on a formulaic basis, considering factors like enrollment and local revenue. 

The calculation for the minimum amount that schools need is made up of a series of component price estimates. Many of those components are automatically adjusted based on inflation, using the U.S. Department of Commerce’s state and local government price deflator. However, the annual inflation adjustment is capped at 4.5%. This has artificially constrained estimates of school need in years of high inflation: without that cap, we would have seen an increase of 7.08% in 2023 and 8.01% in 2024, but both years the adjustment was limited to 4.5%. This creates a gap between necessary spending to maintain level service, and legally required “adequate”  spending, reducing aid. In 2025, Chapter 70 aid was reduced by $431 million as a product of the inflation cap. Without a legislative fix, this gap will compound, pushing the “adequate” funding amount further and further below the standard of education that we are used to. 

Can’t municipalities pick up the slack? There are two issues with this, one regarding equity and another regarding law. 

Equity: When the burden of education funding is placed too heavily on municipalities, wealthier municipalities are much more likely to be able to maintain full funding, while poorer municipalities are less likely to be able to. Research finds that wealthier school districts spend more per-pupil and their students perform significantly better on standardized tests, and reforms to expand the share of state funding and reduce property tax reliance effectively reduce spending inequities and improve outcomes for disadvantaged communities. When state aid leaves a gap between required funding to meet legal adequacy standards, and required funding to maintain level standards, it dooms poorer districts to worse outcomes. 

Law: In Massachusetts, municipalities rely on property tax as their primary source of revenue. Yet, state law heavily restricts the extent that municipalities can increase their property taxes every year. Proposition 2.5 applies a limit to the dollar amount that each municipality can raise through property taxes every year. The limit increases by 2.5% plus new growth each year. The only way for a municipality to raise more than the limit is if they hold a local referendum called an “override,” which is politically difficult and extremely rare. Indicative of rising fiscal pressures, more and more municipalities have been forced to attempt overrides over the past few years. Due to these restrictions, municipalities are simply not able to keep up with the increased fiscal demand placed on them by state aid falling behind. Prop 2.5 and the Chapter 70 inflation cap leave Massachusetts’ education finance mechanisms extremely vulnerable to inflation at every level, and we are seeing the consequences of that. 

I set out to find out whether the education financial crisis is having a real impact on our schools, by compiling and analyzing data on Massachusetts school districts published by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education. The first major conclusion I came to is that money absolutely matters.

READ THE FULL POST ON AOM'S BLOG>>

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Lily's Lowdown: Senate Passes PROTECT Act

In a rare showing of quasi-urgency, the Massachusetts Senate passed a version of the PROTECT Act this week that’s stronger than the version the House voted up in March. The Black and Latino Caucus mobilized earlier this year to file the PROTECT Act, which, among other things, would prohibit local law enforcement from inquiring about immigration status, restrict civil immigration arrests in courthouse by requiring a judicial warrant, and bans the creation of new 287(g) agreements. Both the Senate and House versions, however, keep the Department of Correction (DOC)’s 287(g) agreement with ICE intact, which allows state Department of Corrections facilities to be used to house detained noncitizens. 

Where the House’s version allowed for some exceptions to the renewal and creation of new 287(g) agreements, the Senate’s version leaves no room for exceptions. Perhaps the most important distinction between the two versions is the Senate’s expansion of designated “sensitive locations,” where judicial warrants are needed to enter and make an immigration-related arrest. The House version would apply this protection only to courthouses; the Senate version also includes schools, childcare facilities, and places of worship. The Senate version also expanded on the House’s protections, adding a number of new policies like banning non-Massachusetts military personnel from entering without the governor’s express permission (in an attempt to prevent Trump from sending in troops to support ICE). 

Now, the House and the Senate need to reconcile the differences in their versions before the bill heads to Governor Healey’s desk for her signature. Even though the passage of a version of PROTECT as strong as the Senate’s would be a major victory for protecting members of our communities from Trump’s immigration crackdown, it’s important to remember this legislation’s roots: the now-dead Safe Communities Act, which would have also ended the DOC’s 287(g) agreement with ICE. 

By diluting this crucial aspect of Safe Communities, PROTECT still fails to go far enough to completely sever the Commonwealth’s relationship with ICE and thus, helps enable Trump’s mass deportation rampage. This is particularly troubling given that Governor Healey has continued to double down on her insistence that Massachusetts is “not a sanctuary state,” and expressed willingness to work with federal immigration enforcement. Even more troubling is extensive reporting by WGBH that found dozens of police departments across the state regularly communicate with ICE, share non-mandated biometric data with the agency, and even have policies “allowing or requiring” communication with ICE. 

So while the Senate’s version of PROTECT is still something of a success for those of us who don’t wish to see our neighbors and friends rounded up and hauled off by ICE, it’s important that we remember that Massachusetts is the only blue state that remains in a 287(g) agreement with ICE. It’s the legislative secrecy and unproductivity cocktail that waters down meaningful legislation with thrust—like Safe Communities—into something more lukewarm.

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Missed a Scoop or two? You can find a full archive of all past Saturday Scoops on our blog.

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What else we're reading this week

Essential reporting in local and national news this work 

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Take action

Join AOM for a spring fundraiser! - June 7th, 2 - 4 pm in Concord

Join Act on Mass, Concord Indivisble, and Indivisble Acton Area for our musical spring fundraiser, featuring Auditor Diana DiZoglio! 

SING WITH THE AUDITOR ON 6/7>>

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Thanks for reading and for taking action! We'll be back next week! 

In solidarity,

Scotia

Scotia Hille (she/her)

Executive Director, Act on Mass