Members Ex Officio
Max Page, MTA President
Deb McCarthy, MTA Vice President
Environmental Health and Safety Committee
The MTA Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) Committee will support and encourage, and act as a resource for the MTA and its affiliates in their efforts to promote healthy and safe environments for staff and students.
Specific goals of the committee are to organize and lead efforts to enact legislation and regulatory changes; advocate and lobby for necessary state funding to allow school districts and colleges to adequately maintain and repair school/college buildings and to require the state to adequately maintain and repair its educational facilities; continue MTA initiatives and efforts to educate members and staff; and support and encourage MTA locals in their efforts to demand school/college building health, and protection of members' and students' health in a proactive manner.
Chair:
Rachel Skerker, Attleboro Education Association
Committee members:
- Bill Coleman, Retired
- Kevin Enos, Franklin Technical Teachers Association
- Tom Estabrook, GRACE UMass Lowell
- Michelle Gorden, Brookline Educators Union
- Rafael Moure-Eraso, Retired
- Dean Robinson, Mass Society of Professors-UMass Amherst
- Wilmore Webley, Massachusetts Society of Professors
Environmental Health & Safety Field Representative/Organizer: Scott Fulmer
ARPA Funding for Health & Safety
ARPA Funding
Read MTA’s proposals for ARPA funding, State Appropriated Federal Funds: Recovery and Justice After the Pandemic.
Through the American Rescue Plan Act, the federal government is making an unprecedented investment in public education from prekindergarten through higher education. This funding can be used to improve ventilation and ensure healthy air exchanges, (and energy efficiency) and for mitigation of health hazards.
Now is the time to organize and advocate for how that money is spent to benefit our students and our communities. Visit massteacher.org/arparesources to access the collection of resources, materials and strategies available to MTA local associations and chapters.
Out of the Pandemic: Building the Public School Buildings Our Communities Deserve
Before the pandemic, our nearly one million public school students walked into schools of vastly different conditions, reproducing in architecture the enormous inequality that is, shamefully, a defining feature of Massachusetts. The distance between the investment in schools in our most and least privileged districts is as wide as in any state. The pandemic has only exacerbated these inequities.
The MTA and the American Institute of Architects Massachusetts collaborated to advance solutions that will allow students to return to our public schools buildings in the near future, and finally fix the long-term inequalities that are reflected in the thousands of public schools buildings. We held three workshops – October 1, 8, and 15, from 4 to 5:30 – so educators and architects could share their perspectives on schools buildings, and together figure out ways to advance our common goal – outstanding public schools buildings for our students.
Building the Public School Buildings our Communities Deserve
In the first session in the series, Pip Lewis and Laura Wernick provided an overview of the problem of schools building design and repair. In breakout...
Research and Design of Healthy, Equitable Schools
In this session, Erika Eitland shared the latest research on how the design of the educational environment affects the health, well-being, and educati...
Our State School Building Process: Challenges and Possibilities for Radical Change
This session provided an overview of how schools are funded and how the Massachusetts School Building Authority process works. Dorrie Brooks and Max P...