The Massachusetts Association of School Committees Uses $2.5 Million In Taxpayer Money To Tweet Support For Kindergarten Sex Ed, Donate Money To Candidates Pushing COVID Vaccines On Children
The Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC) is a nonprofit that School Committees from across the state join with the stated mission to:
“…achieve excellence in school leadership through advocacy, training and service. We are pleased to offer a rich array of publications, resources, events and conferences to support the valuable work that our members do.”
They also:
“…lobby for and work with school committees through programs and services like professional and school policy development, assistance with helping districts find or replace superintendents, state level advocacy for committees’ views, education and analysis of new or proposed state legislation, and assorted conferences and workshops throughout the year.”
Local school committees pay membership dues based on the size of their district. For instance, the Wachusett Regional District, which constitutes 5 towns with a population of 40K, pays close to $15K a year in dues. In return the MASC helps districts with superintendent searches and invites members to an annual conference on the Cape. Last year we wrote about this conference because no one was wearing masks in a tightly packed hotel ballroom, despite requiring all children in the state to wear masks in school.
Attending the conference costs $450 per member, which school districts pay for. The districts also reimburse them for meals ($60 dinner and $40 lunch tickets at the conference) and hotel costs.
Last year we published internal emails from MASC members showing them plotting to force vaccines on children, discussing ways to ban unvaccinated children from participating in sports, and calling concerned parents domestic terrorists.
So what does MASC do with all the money they bring in from their member districts? Mostly they tweet stuff like this:
MASC is a radical, left wing organization that takes in over $2.5 million a year, including $1.16 million in member dues, over $400K for the state conference, and $150K to assist districts with their superintendent searches.
They also took in $164K in PPP grants.
Much of that revenue goes to pay salaries. Executive Director Glenn Koocher pays himself a salary of $180K, while Jenifer Handy, James Hardy, Dorothy Presser, and Worcester School Committee member Tracy Novick make over $100K in compensation.
Tracy Novick is an otherwise unemployable busy body who spends an obsessive amount of time tweeting about school committee issues.
She is incredibly unpopular in Worcester and lost several elections before squeaking onto the SC in 2011. After we began blogging about her opposition to school resource officers in 2015, Turtleboy led a revolution to vote her out that November. After that she had no purpose in life at all, so MASC gave her a job that pays close to $100K a year purely out of pity and her devotion to their political ideology.
She snuck back onto the SC in 2019, taking one of the last spots in a race that got little coverage. She now gets to vote to appropriate taxpayer money from the Worcester School Committee to pay for membership into MASC. In essence she is voting to pay her MASC salary, on top of collecting her School Committee salary. It’s an obvious conflict that no one has ever brought up. She did not return our request for comment.
Although she led the charge to fire Worcester’s first black superintendent Melinda Boone, Tracy Novick has successfully passed herself off as a social justice icon once she realized that it could be profitable. She led the charge as a member of the Worcester School Committee to keep schools closed, claiming that only white parents cared if kids went to school. She also said a white doctor who recommended schools be open was only doing so because she had white privilege.
After seeing the tweet from MASC advocating for sex ed to be taught to kindergarteners, I contacted Glenn Koocher to ask more about his organization. Specifically I asked if MASC was a political entity, and he told me that they weren’t because they were a nonprofit. I asked if they donated money to political candidates and he told me they didn’t. However, campaign finance records show that they have donated to State Senator Jason Lewis and former Framingham Mayor Yvonne Spicer.
Perhaps Glenn just used the wrong account. He frequently donates personally to left wing candidates, including Boston City Councillor Julia Mejia, State Rep Carol Doherty, and State Senator Rebecca Rausch, who MASC named “Legislator of the Year.”
Senator Rausch is being rewarded by the MASC, who claims they are an apolitical organization, because she led the push to force children to wear masks indefinitely.
RELEASE: With < 1 month before our kids return to school, @MassGovernor has chosen to play Russian roulette with the health of MA families. Today I filed a bill to implement universal masking in schools for the 2021-22 year + expand youth access to #COVID vaccines. #mapoli #maedu pic.twitter.com/uOO2IybFDS
— Senator Becca Rausch (@BeccaRauschMA) August 2, 2021
🧵 Here's a sampling of what I've heard from 1000s of parents, teachers, & others urging statewide universal #masking in #MAedu (which @CharlieBakerMA flatly refuses to do, even though it's actually his job to do it; tell him to follow the #Science here: https://t.co/Mz38UVzCEM)
— Becca Rausch (@Becca_Rausch) August 13, 2021
Carol Doherty was one of the bill’s cosponsors, despite appearing without a mask at least year’s conference.
Both Rausch and Doherty are in highly contested re-election campaigns. Rausch is facing State Rep Shawn Dooley, who I’ve personally had many issues with, but who you absolutely have to vote for if you live in her Senate district. Doherty is being challenged by Taunton City Councillor Chris Coute for the seat she currently holds representing Taunton and Easton. He’s a very good candidate, who you should vote for if you live in those towns.
MASC also spent over $100K in legal services last year, $32K in tax services, $10K to a political analyst, and $8,500 for a diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist named Derrick Gay to deliver a single speech.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Dighton-Rehoboth District voted 9-1 last year to leave MASC after Koocher wrote a letter supporting the Justice Department’s categorization of concerned parents as “domestic terrorists” in September of 2021:
The controversial portion of the letter was this sentence: “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
The letter caused a firestorm, with critics accusing the NSBA of calling parents domestic terrorists.
Another reason for Morse’s concern had to do with an October 2021 e-mail obtained by conservative group Parents Defending Education through the Freedom of Information Act. In the e-mail from Koocher to the NSBA he expresses support for their initiative.
“We are looking forward to collaborating on a possible regional effort and, certainly, doing something significant here in Massachusetts to generate public awareness of the need for Washington to have our backs on protecting our members and students as well,” said Koocher in the e-mail.
Leominster School Committee member Greg Thomas, who was elected post-COVID on a parent’s rights platform, led a push to do the same in Leominster. In a 7-2 vote they elected to remain in MASC.
It’s clear at this point that MASC is nothing more than a communist organization that exists to push a political agenda on children. They extort money from school committees because they believe they have to be in it, but they really don’t as Dighton-Rehoboth showed everyone. All they’re doing is paying to keep Tracy Novick employed so she can lobby for people like Rebecca Rausch and Carol Doherty. Both Dighton and Rehoboth are red towns, so there’s really no need for any similar districts to keep wasting money on this organization. Every school committee in the state should put it to a vote so the taxpayers know where they stand.
