Tuesday, September 30 we covered issues ranging from local public health, to K-12 education funding, to the issues facing municipalities, to meetings with nurses and Northfield .
I began my morning by meeting with municipal officials. We discussed budget and policy updates and looked ahead to the remainder of the legislative session to understand how we can be the most impactful.
Right afterwards, I went down to the Gardner Auditorium in the State House where I testified before the Joint Committee on Education in support of legislation I filed with Representative Domb to reform charter school funding in Massachusetts. Watch my testimony here.
As the clock struck 1:00, I joined Representative Hannah Kane to host a briefing on the impact of the Legislature’s recent investments into local public health. Attendees heard from Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Robbie Goldstein and Office of Local and Regional Health Director Sam Wong, in addition to members of the public health workforce. The full briefing is available here.
Right after the briefing wrapped up, I joined Chief of Staff Jared Freedman in the Great Hall to meet with nursing students and faculty from the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing at UMass Amherst as part of American Nurses Association of MA advocacy day. ANAMA is supporting important legislation including bills to establish a nursing workforce center of excellence, expand and increase funding for primary care, protect people in an operating room from surgical smoke (which I file and which passed the Senate last session), and to remove toxic chemicals from children’s products (which I also file).
To round out the day (and after spending about three hours on Route 2), I attended a Select Board meeting back in Northfield. I was grateful to talk water/sewer infrastructure improvements and much more with the Northfield Select Board.
In total, on Tuesday, I drove just over 230 miles throughout the day. Glad to be in this work to represent the beautiful 25 cities and towns that comprise our district.
