WELLESLEY – Tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents are expected to take advantage of a new policy expanding eligibility for free community college in the state, Gov. Maura Healey says.

Healey was part of a celebration of the MassEducate program at MassBay Community College Wednesday. 

She said 10,000 students have enrolled in community colleges for the fall semester, more than double the number of students who qualified for free tuition under “MassReconnect” a year before. 

“This is a big deal,” Healey said. “And we estimate that it’s going to be 45,000 in no time, in just a year.”

What to know about free community college in Massachusetts

The governor’s budget dedicated $117.5 million for the free community college program. Much of it is being funded through the “Millionaire’s Tax” in Massachusetts. 

Anyone without a bachelor’s degree who has lived in Massachusetts for at least a year and enrolls in about two classes per semester is eligible for free community college. There is also an allowance of up to $1,200 a year for books, supplies and other expenses, depending on a student’s household income. 

“It’s a revolutionary change in higher education in Massachusetts,” MassBay president David Podell said.

Senate President Karen Spilka said that community college enrollment “going through the roof” will help close the workforce gap in Massachusetts.

“Our community colleges help fill the gaps in health care, early education and care, life sciences, automotive,” Spilka said. “We need skilled, talented folks going into all of these areas.”

Helping students afford a higher education

Ziakeya Haggerty is 36 years old and was never able to earn a higher degree.

“I had went to college years ago and never finished,” she said. “I realized that I just couldn’t afford it.”

But as Massachusetts expanded free community college eligibility, Haggerty learned about the free tuition possibility and enrolled at Roxbury Community College. She has plans to go to medical school and use her degree to help her neighbors in Boston.

Now Haggerty says she is doing her best to spread the word about free community college. 

“Everybody I talk to, I inform, ‘you know you can go back,’” she said. 

When Nico Romeri came out as transgender at 14 years old, he first shared the news with his closest friends and a therapist. The private conversations he had outside of the home helped him feel more comfortable to then approach his parents, who supported his transition. If anyone else had revealed his gender identity to his family on his behalf, he said it would have been disruptive to his coming out process.

“I really wanted to have a one-on-one discussion with them, where they knew I trusted them and they trusted me,” Romeri said. “Having that break of trust before you’re confident enough to tell other people is a huge deal.”

A recent ruling helps ensure that other trans students will have the protection to come out to their families when they’re ready. The case came about in May 2022 after a New Hampshire mother inadvertently learned from a teacher that her child used a different name and pronouns in school. The parent argued that the school policy, which advises school personnel not to disclose a student’s transgender status, infringed upon her ability to raise her child as she sees fit. Along with his mother, Heather, Romeri joined an amicus brief in support of the school policy.

In August, the New Hampshire supreme court upheld a lower court’s ruling on the school district policy, affirming trans and gender nonconforming students’ rights to privacy concerning their gender identities and presentation at school. The decision is the first such ruling to come out of a state supreme court, and according to Chris Erchull, senior staff attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the ruling could set guidance for other states and federal courts fighting similar cases.

“When there’s no US supreme court precedent, federal courts have to look around at what other courts are saying for precedent,” said Erchull. “So it is going to be very powerful and persuasive.”

Erchull, who filed an amicus brief in the case, said it was critical for students to have a supportive framework that allows them to explore their gender identity in school.

“It’s not a public school teacher or administrator’s place to make a decision about how and when to talk to families about these really intimate, sensitive matters,” he said. “It is in the best interest of everyone if the information comes from the student when the student is ready, on the student’s own terms.”

Policies on LGBTQ+ students’ right to privacy varies by school district throughout the nation. In 2015, the New Hampshire school board association issued a model policy to protect the privacy of trans students and to prevent discrimination, which was adopted by 48 of 196 school districts and charter schools, according to a 2020 ACLU New Hampshire report.

The policy was rescinded in 2022 due to conservative pushback, but some school districts, including Manchester, the largest in the state, continue to advise school personnel not to share a trans or gender nonconforming student’s identity to others without the child’s consent. In July, California became the first state to ban school district policies that require staff to notify parents when a child changes their name or pronouns.

Revealing a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation to their family when they’re not ready can lead to suicide and the child getting kicked out of their home, he added. LGBTQ+ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts.

For Heather Romeri, it is crucial that students make their own choices about who they disclose their gender identity to and when. “Two of my children are both trans, so they have both been able to come to me at their own time when they were ready to disclose the information they needed to,” she said. “Hearing that from someone else would have been not good for our relationship, not good for … our children [being able to come] out safely and happily.”

Nico Romeri has trans friends who haven’t shared their gender identity with their parents because they fear for their safety, Heather said. “They really believe they will be hurt or they will be kicked out of their house,” she explained. “They have [seen] others who have tried to come out to their parents, and it’s had negative repercussions to them emotionally.” She sees the victory of the New Hampshire ruling as a prime example for other states considering policies for LGBTQ+ students’ rights.

Now 17, Romeri said that he joined the amicus brief to support his friends who don’t have the same supportive environment to transition. “It’s really important to represent the people that can’t voice [their identity fully] and to keep the laws in place.”

7.

A word I’ve heard a lot over the past three weeks has been ‘responsibility’. Coming into this season, given how last year went, and the amount of integral changes general manager Tom Fitzgerald made this summer, there’s a big sense of responsibility among the players to do right by their general manager and the work he has put in. And it’s not just from the returning players, it’s from those who he brought in to make the difference. They, too, feel that responsibility.

“He’s pushing, he wants to win. Fitzy wants to win,” Jacob Markstrom shared. “I feel like everybody wants the same thing, it’s just how we get there. And I think he, as a GM, has done everything in his power to make sure that’s possible. You’ve got to see that and take responsibility and you’ve got to come together as a group and show your appreciation. It’s not easy.

“You can say a lot of things in life, right?,” newcomer Brenden Dillon added. “Or you can say that you want to get in shape, you can say that you want to eat healthier, you can say that you want to work hard. But until you actually go do it, like, it’s pretty easy to say it. So I think for Fitzy, and of course, I’m just getting to know him, but he’s walked the walk that he said he’s going to do. And I think for all of us as players, when someone shows belief in you and whether they show confidence in you, all the different things like you want to follow through with that.”

8.

I loved Dillon’s hypothetical team when he was summing up Fitzgerald’s off-season pretty well: acquiring assets to make his team better. It was a well-rounded search, and Dillon joins a team now that has a true sense of everything.

“For our group, we know what our identity has been, and there’s a strength of us, and I think we want to continue to have that, but also add to that. For the guys who were brought in, you know, hockey teams need all different types of personalities, they also need different types of skill levels and all different types of just hockey players. You need a mixed bag. If you can have… I’d like to think they’d be good .. but if you have twenty Connor McDavids, it’s like you know, they’ll be good but sometimes you do need a little bit of everything.”

9.

This summer, Jonas Siegenthaler hosted his first hockey camp in Thailand. Siegenthaler is of Thai descent, his mom is Thai, and in fact, his parents recently relocated to live full-time in Thailand. I spoke with Siegenthaler about what the experience was like.

“They’re, they’re really proud of me. I’m the first Thai NHL player,” he said. “I don’t know when the next one is going to be, maybe 10 years? 20 years? The young kids there, they’re pretty good right now and they’re really good skill-wise, skating-wise. They’re actually, I would say better than kids in Switzerland. But their problem is they don’t have any games. That’s their main problem. They practice all week, skills. They don’t understand the game part as well. That’s the part that kind of stops them from developing to the next level.”

Siegenthaler said there are roughly only 600 registered hockey players in Thailand with roughly four junior teams. He’s hoping to find a way over the next few years to continue his camp and help the game grow to better heights but does say it’s ‘a difficult problem to solve’.

He shared this great story about a Q&A he had with the kids at the camp that really touched him.

“Some questions were so cute. It was this one little girl, she was sitting next to me in the locker room and she goes ‘Coach Siegs, one day I want to play in the NHL like you’. I was almost crying, you know it was just so, so nice.”

10.

The time has come for Seamus Casey to make his NHL debut. Head coach Sheldon Keefe confirmed it Thursday morning in Prague. The 20-year-old has done everything that’s been asked of him during this camp and has made his case; heard loud and clear.

And what a way to enter the NHL — on the Global Series stage in Prague. Casey will be just the 5th rookie to make their NHL debut at one of these international games since it was rebranded at the Global Series games in 2010. Overall, 36 players in NHL history have made their NHL debut outside of North America, but since the rebranding, Casey will become just the 5th.