Massachusetts
‘An impossible choice’: With little federal help to combat rising costs, Head Start looks to Massachusetts for more help – The Boston Globe
In Massachusetts, roughly 1,300 slots for children across Head Start’s 28 agencies have been eliminated in the last three years because federal funding has plateaued over that time, while the cost of running the program continues to rise, according to the Massachusetts Head Start Association. Nationally, Head Start enrollment dropped from 1.1 million kids in 2013 to around 785,000 in 2022, according to research by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“If they didn’t get into a Head Start program, they would be sitting at home,” said Brittany Acosta, a Head Start parent in Dorchester.
It’s teachers are drastically underpaid, and there’s a serious need for a rainy day-type fund should the federal government shut down again, the association says. As they’ve done in years past, state lawmakers have offered to provide financial relief, but the Massachusetts Head Start Association’s request for 3 percent above the amount it received last year, an additional $4.6 million to help its staff keep up with the state’s rising cost of living, so far has not been allocated.
Last year, President Trump’s leaked budget proposal revealed he considered eliminating Head Start entirely. Then, in the summer, he cut off Head Start enrollment for immigrants without legal status. And during the fall’s government shutdown, four Head Start centers in Massachusetts closed because they couldn’t access their funding.
Trump’s latest budget proposal shows a fourth year without increasing funding for the program, which was established in the mid-1960s.
Michelle Haimowitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, said the program doesn’t want to eliminate more child slots than it already has, but paying teachers a competitive salary is equally important in order to keep them from leaving for higher paying jobs. Head Start teachers make under $50,000 annually compared to over $85,000 for the average Massachusetts kindergarten teacher.
“It’s an impossible choice,” Haimowitz said. “When we reduce the size of our programs, we’re not reducing the size of the need.”
Massachusetts is one of few states that supplements federal funding for Head Start, and last year it increased the program’s state grant from $5 million to $20 million, adding to the $189 million in federal aid it receives in this state.
“We can’t run a program without giving staff a raise for three years,” Haimowitz said. “Our next fight now is not just for survival, but it’s for thriving and growth.”
The Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday released its budget, which doesn’t grant Head Start’s request of a 3 percent boost. But state Representative Christopher Worrell filed an amendment for additional funding. Worrell, whose district covers parts of Dorchester and Roxbury, said he loves Head Start’s embrace of culture, recalling one visit to a center where he could smell staff cooking stew chicken, a traditional Caribbean dish.
“I’ve been to dozens of schools throughout the district, and you don’t get that home-cooked meal,” Worrell said. “[The state is] stepping up and doing the best we can with what we have.”
At the Action for Boston Community Development’s Head Start and Early Head Start center in Dorchester, the children of Classroom 7 arrived one Monday morning and dove into bins of magnetic tiles before their teachers, Paola Polanco and Leolina Rasundar Chinnappa, served breakfast. Acosta dropped off her 4-year-old daughter, Violeta, before reporting to her teaching position at the center, where several other Head Start parents also work.
“It’s important for all Head Start parents to have the opportunity to give their child an experience in a learning environment before they actually start kindergarten,” Acosta said.
Beyond providing early education and care to children of low-income families, from birth to age 5, the program helps them access other resources, including mental health services, SNAP benefits, homelessness assistance, and employment opportunities.
It also serves as daycare for parents who might not be able to afford it, while they’re at work.
Research has shown the importance of preschool in a child’s development with one 2023 study, focused on Boston public preschools, finding that it improves student behavior and increases the likelihood of high school graduation and college enrollment.
For Rickencia Clerveaux and Christopher Mclean, the Dorchester Head Start center is the only place they feel comfortable sending their 3-year-old son, Shontz, who is on the autism spectrum. Shontz’s stimming — repetitive movements that stimulate the senses — has reduced, and his speech has improved since he joined the center in 2024, Clerveaux said.
His parents say he’s also come out of his shell. Mclean now drops his son off and gets a simple “bye” as Shontz joins his classmates, he said.
He and Clerveaux said they appreciate the specialized attention Shontz can receive from teachers, such as when staff identified that Shontz might have hearing issues. His parents were able to follow up with their doctor and get Shontz to have surgery to improve his hearing.
“It’s a safe net for parents,” Clerveaux said. “There’s so many ways that him being here helps him grow better.”
Without Head Start, Clerveaux said a lot of pressure would be put on parents to find care for their children, “knowing that they’re already struggling or not getting the ends to meet.”
“That’s a burden for everybody in the community,” she said. “If there’s no funding, there’s no daycare and parents cannot work.”
Lauren Albano can be reached at lauren.albano@globe.com. Follow her on X @LaurenAlbano_.
A man has died following an apparent drowning at a pond in Randolph, Massachusetts, on Sunday.
The Randolph police and fire departments received a 911 call at around 4 p.m. for a swimmer in distress in the water on Pond Street, according to the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office..
Firefighters located the man a short time later, officials added, and he was taken by ambulance to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The Kingston Fire Department had said just before 4 p.m. that their dive team was activated for a missing swimmer in Randolph, but that the activation was canceled after the swimmer was located.
Further information is not being released at this time, including the man’s name.
Massachusetts State Police detectives and the Randolph Police Department are investigating.
Firefighters in Lawrence, Massachusetts are working to contain a fire that damaged at least three buildings on Sunday afternoon.
Lawrence Fire Chief Patrick Delaney said they received multiple 911 calls about the buildings on fire at the intersection of Haverhill and Margin Street at about 12:45 p.m.
When firefighters arrived, there were three occupied multi-family buildings with heavy fire.
“Crews did an excellent job once they arrived on scene to make sure we did a primary search of all three buildings, make sure everybody was out,” Chief Delaney said.
No injuries have been reported. It is unclear how many people have been displaced from the three buildings that were on fire.
Chief Delaney said the firefighters were impacted by the hot weather.
“The crews are working extremely hard, they’re taking a lot of heat in all three fire buildings and we’re trying to get crews in here to make sure that they’re safe and give them some relief,” Chief Delaney said.
Investigators are working to determine the cause of the fire. Firefighters from other nearby communities responded for mutual aid.
“We’re at a fourth alarm which brings a lot of resources to our city, but they’re well needed in a fire like this,” Chief Delaney said.
Police are asking residents to avoid the area of Haverhill Street at Margin Street because of the fire.
Lawrence, Massachusetts is a city about 30 miles north of Boston.
When a government whistleblower risks a career to expose corruption to a journalist, the first question is always the same: Will my name be kept out of it?
The same is true when a hospital employee reveals a cover-up, when a church insider exposes abuse, or when a corporate source provides evidence that a company has concealed the dangers of its products.
In 41 states and the District of Columbia, a journalist can answer that question with the weight of law behind the promise. In Massachusetts, a journalist cannot.
That is unacceptable for a commonwealth that calls itself the cradle of American liberty and a birthplace of the free press.
And it is also dangerous, especially now, at a moment when journalists face escalating hostility, when federal officials openly threaten and demean the press, and when the legal protections that make independent journalism possible are under assault from multiple directions.
Two bills pending on Beacon Hill would remedy that. House Bill 4638 and Senate Bill 1253, both titled “An Act Relative to the Free Flow of Information,” would establish a statutory reporter’s privilege in Massachusetts, protecting journalists from being compelled to disclose confidential sources or unpublished information except in narrowly defined circumstances involving national security, imminent violence or a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial.
Last fall, both the House and Senate members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary gave these bills a favorable report — marking the first time a shield law bill has ever cleared committee in Massachusetts. Since then, however, the bills have languished. Now, their fate is down to the wire.
The clock is ticking. The formal legislative session ends July 31. If both chambers do not bring these bills to a floor vote by then, the legislation dies, and the entire effort has to start over in the next session.
We urge House Speaker Ronald Mariano, Senate President Karen Spilka, and the leadership of both chambers to ensure that a shield law goes to a vote before time runs out.
The need is more urgent than ever. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case of Catherine Herridge, a veteran investigative reporter facing daily fines of $800 for refusing to reveal a confidential source. Herridge’s case arose in federal court, where no shield law applies.
But Massachusetts journalists face a similar vulnerability in state court, where judges apply a discretionary balancing test that has produced inconsistent and unjust outcomes. In the Ayash v. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute case, a reporter and his newspaper were held in contempt for refusing to identify a confidential source — even though the underlying claims were ultimately dismissed.
In Commonwealth v. Karen Read, the trial court reversed its own ruling on a reporter’s claim of privilege, underscoring the current standard’s unpredictability.
This legal uncertainty has real-world consequences.
Sources with information the public should know — about government misconduct, about institutional abuse, about threats to public health and safety — are reluctant to come forward.
Reporters at small and local newspapers, the very outlets that cover city halls and school committees and police departments, face the prospect of costly court battles they cannot afford every time a subpoena lands on an editor’s desk.
A statutory shield law would replace that uncertainty with clearly defined protections, replacing individual judges’ unguided discretion with an unambiguous legal standard on which everyone could rely. The commonwealth’s outlier status grows more conspicuous each year.
In March 2025, Idaho became the latest state to enact a shield law, with its Republican-led legislature approving the law unanimously. There is no reason for Massachusetts not to follow suit.
This legislation carries no fiscal cost. It has no formal opposition. It has the support of every major news and press organization in the state, as well as of the ACLU of Massachusetts and Common Cause. What it needs now is a vote. The people of Massachusetts deserve the same protections for a free and vigorous press that citizens in the vast majority of states already enjoy. The Legislature has just weeks to act. It should not let this historic opportunity slip away.
Robert J. Ambrogi is the executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association.
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