The Massachusetts Secretary of Education is pushing back on federal cuts to education funding, saying higher education needs to be more accessible nationwide, just like it is in the Bay State.
“Optimism and joy are part of that back to school orientation, it’s important,” said Patrick Tutwiler, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education overseeing elementary, secondary and higher ed.
Federal education funding
Billions of dollars in education funding on the chopping block in Washington, D.C., where the House has approved deep cuts in federal spending for student aid over the next decade, eliminated some loan programs and limited others, among other changes.
The Senate is pushing back, but Tutwiler said during an interview on WBZ-TV’s Keller At Large that “what’s at stake is the springboard to people’s dreams.”
“We should really be making moves to make college and higher education more accessible in responsible ways, much as we’ve done here in Massachusetts, which we believe is a nation-leading model. We’re hopeful that the federal government continues to be a partner with us in that effort,” he said.
School cellphone bans
There’s that optimism. And Tutwiler is also hopeful that back on Beacon Hill, the House will follow the Senate’s lead and approve a statewide ban on student access to cellphones while in school.
“Cellphones have become challenging in schools,” Tutwiler said. “It’s more than just a distraction. It is an issue around depression. There’s issues related to anxiety that are tied back to access to the cellphones. If you talk to any teacher, they’ll tell you that the power struggles around cellphones are real.”
One of the main area of pushback against a ban is the claim that parents need a way to contact their kids in case of an emergency, but Tutwiler said in 26 years as an educator, “I was never aware of a scenario where a parent or caregiver could not get in touch with a child for an appointment or because of some sort of emergency at home, there are systems in place to that can facilitate that. So I would just lift that up as the reality.”
Massachusetts teacher strikes
Despite a state law prohibiting teachers from going on strike, the last school year was marked by work stoppages in several Massachusetts cities and towns, a situation Tutwiler hopes will not be repeated.
“I’m hopeful that the bargaining process is robust between communities and their units, that they get to deals so that we avoid these scenarios where students are out of school,” Tutwiler said. “Students need to be in school, and we’ve seen the pain and the disruption that it causes when they’re not…. We obviously support teachers being paid appropriately, having the benefits, the working conditions that they deserve. We just don’t think that strikes are appropriate for children.”
Tutwiler also discussed the administration’s push for reform of literacy education with a return to phonics-based curricula in the interview, which can be watched on demand here.
Join us every Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. for in-depth discussion of politics and policy on the weekend edition of Keller At Large.