H.2769 / S.1921 would create a fair system for long-serving teachers to retire with dignity and economic security.

Educators raising young children (most typically women) often are compelled to reduce their work hours to balance family responsibilities. In doing so they may become ineligible for student loan forgiveness and their pension can be negatively impacted. Under current law, an employee who works less than full-time, but more than half-time, is not credited with a full year of service for the purpose of calculating their pension benefits and there is no opportunity to later purchase this time. For example, a teacher who works half-time for 5 years would accrue 2.5 years of service, resulting in a difficult choice: Retire with a smaller pension or work years beyond the normal retirement age.

This bill would:

• Allow teachers who reduced their work time to meet the demands of child-rearing or family care an opportunity to buy back up to five years of service toward their retirement.
• Address the unfair 2010 rule change, which gave full-time retirement credit to teachers who only worked part-time between 1990 to 2010, but only partial (prorated) retirement credit to teachers who switched between full-time and part-time work during that same period.

To be eligible to purchase service under this bill, a teacher must:

• Be a member of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System or the Boston retirement system.
• Currently working full-time.
• Have accrued at least 20 years of creditable service.
• Worked at least half-time for the school year for which they wish to purchase service.

Join MTA members, parents, students, community activists, and municipal leaders from across the Commonwealth as we take strategic action to win legislative and budgetary fixes to the growing fiscal crisis impacting public schools and colleges across the Commonwealth.

2026 Meetings Include:

• February 9 with legislative remarks from Senator Comerford
• March 16 with legislative remarks from Senator Edwards
• April 13
• May 18

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All are welcome!

The Massachusetts House of Representatives and state Senate have each passed bills, H.4683 and S.2940 respectively, that mandate the use of certain literacy curricula in our public schools. Now, a legislative conference committee has been convened to reconcile the differences between the two versions and develop a final, compromise bill. Serving on the conference committee are Rep. Ken Gordon, Rep. Simon Cataldo, Rep. John Marsi, Sen. Sal DiDomenico, Sen. Jason Lewis and Sen. Patrick O’Connor.

The members of the Massachusetts Teachers Association voted overwhelmingly at our Annual Meeting of Delegates to oppose state mandates to use specific literacy curricula, such as those included in H.4683/S.2940, and our deep concern with that provision of both bills remains.

Yet the House and Senate, in different and important ways, each incorporated educators’ feedback into the final versions of the legislation passed by their respective chambers and we need your help in ensuring that the conference committee continues to consider the perspective of public school educators as they develop a final bill.

Specifically, we need you to urge the conference committee to:

• Support provisions in the House bill that focus on investments in reading specialists and other educators who will provide instruction and support to students.
• Support the Senate’s proposed Early Literacy Fund, which is funded at $25 million, to support districts in implementing the curricula mandate and the state in developing its own literacy curriculum to be made freely available to districts.
• Reject language from the House bill that will ban specific instructional practices in our classrooms. As just one example, the House’s language prohibits any “visual memorization of whole words” in a clear reference to so-called “sight words.” If this language, which the Senate did not advance in its bill, is included in the final legislation, educators could violate state law if, among the other enumerated prohibitions, we are considered to be encouraging even just one student to memorize a whole word as a supplemental piece of their overall literacy instruction.

Please email the conference committee right away and urge them to listen to public school educators, the experts on literacy, by addressing our conference committee priorities. Please also call their offices to follow up on your email. Use the phone numbers provided to make your voice heard.