Education at Every Stage of Life

Public education is the promise we make to every child, and right now we are breaking it at both ends: families are paying more for child care than for rent, and educators are leaving the profession because they cannot afford to live in the communities they serve. Erika fought for $1.5 billion in new funding for our public schools, and she filed the bill to guarantee a living wage for every educator, including a $55,000 minimum salary for the paraprofessionals and support staff who keep our schools running. She will keep fighting until every school is fully funded, because a child's education must never depend on their zip code. From pre-K through public college, education is a public good.

A Fighter for Public Schools, Endorsed by the Educators Themselves

Public education is a core fight for Erika, and it has been for nearly a decade, since before she was ever elected. The problem has always been structural: a school system funded largely by local property taxes, layered on top of segregated housing, produces the deepest inequity in public life, where the students who need the most get the least. Erika organized alongside educators and labor unions in the inside-outside campaign that won the Student Opportunity Act and its $1.5 billion in new funding for public schools, targeted at special education, English language learners, and low-income students, and she filed the bill to guarantee a living wage for every educator, with a $70,000 minimum for teachers and $55,000 for the paraprofessionals and education support professionals who keep schools running.

That is why the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the largest union in the state, endorsed Erika on day one of this campaign: because educators know the difference between a legislator who says the right things and a fighter who stands with their union when it counts. When educators demand smaller class sizes, safe and healthy buildings, and the staffing their students deserve, they are fighting for the best learning conditions for every child, and Erika will always stand with them.

The Cuts Are Here, and They Hit the Students Who Need the Most

Budget cuts are no longer a threat on the horizon: they are hitting classrooms in our district right now, and hitting hardest in urban districts and gateway cities across the state. Federal funding is being slashed, costs have outrun the Student Opportunity Act's assumptions, and the students paying the price are exactly the students the law was written for: students with disabilities, English language learners, low-income students, and immigrant students. Districts are cutting paraprofessionals, counselors, and programs while being told to wait and see. Erika has fought these cuts at every turn, and she will keep fighting until the Student Opportunity Act's promise is fully funded in real dollars, because a funding formula that inflation quietly hollows out is a promise broken in slow motion.

Universal Child Care and Pre-K for Every Family

Massachusetts has some of the most expensive child care in the nation, with infant care costing families more than UMass tuition, and the results are exactly what you would expect: tens of thousands of parents, most of them women, forced out of the workforce, and early educators, the workforce that makes all other work possible, paid so little they cannot stay in the profession. When pandemic-era funding for child care providers was set to expire, it was educators and parents organizing that saved the state's grant program, and that organizing points the way forward.

Erika will fight for universal, affordable child care and pre-K for every family in Massachusetts, and she will tell you honestly how to pay for it: by making the largest corporations and the wealthiest pay their fair share. Erika has filed and championed corporate tax reforms, closing the offshore profits loophole, taxing the digital advertising revenue of the largest tech platforms, and a surtax on companies with extreme CEO-to-worker pay gaps, that together raise over $2 billion a year. New York City is proving universal child care can be delivered at scale, and Massachusetts, the state that claims education as its brand, has no excuse to be behind.

Debt-Free Public Higher Education, at Every Age

Erika was proud to vote for free community college for every Massachusetts resident, and it is already changing lives: any adult can now go back to school and earn a degree without paying tuition, whether they are 18 or 58. That is what continuing education for adults should look like, and it is proof of what the Fair Share Amendment makes possible when we tax incomes over $1 million and invest the revenue in education. But the job is unfinished, because funding for our public higher education system was cut by over 30 percent in real terms over two decades, and students at our four-year public universities still graduate saddled with debt. Lack of money should never be a barrier to any student's ambitions, and Erika will fight to make our entire world-class public higher education system debt-free.

What We Have Already Won

The last few years prove that organizing works and that taxing the rich funds the schools our communities deserve:

• $1.5 billion in new K-12 funding through the Student Opportunity Act, won by educators, unions, and organizers, with tens of millions flowing to schools in our district.
• Universal free school meals for every student, permanently funded, so no child learns hungry and no family fills out forms to prove their poverty.
• Free community college for all, plus the program that opened community college to adults 25 and older, both funded by the Fair Share Amendment.
• Over $1.5 billion invested in early education and care, including the provider grants that educators organized to save, and scholarships and loan forgiveness for early educators.
• An end to the MCAS graduation requirement, after voters agreed with educators that a standardized test measures a student's zip code, not their future.

The Unfinished Agenda

In the Senate, Erika will keep organizing with educators, parents, students, and the unions that have fought beside her from the beginning. And she will fight to:

• Fully fund every public school in real dollars. Complete and update the Student Opportunity Act so inflation cannot hollow it out, protect special education and English language learner funding from every cut, and invest in the school buildings our students spend their days in.
• Pass the educator living wage bill. A $70,000 minimum salary for teachers and $55,000 for paraprofessionals and education support professionals, because schools run on people who deserve to afford the communities they serve.
• Win universal child care and pre-K. Affordable for every family and sustainable for every educator, funded by making the largest corporations and the wealthiest pay their fair share.
• Make public higher education debt-free at every age. Build on free community college until every student can graduate from any Massachusetts public college or university without debt, whether they enroll at 18 or return at 48.
• Back educators at the bargaining table. Stand with unions fighting for smaller class sizes, safe and healthy green school buildings, student support staff, and a racially inclusive curriculum, because educators' working conditions are students' learning conditions.