Letter: Elect Democrats to Stop Project 2025 Agenda

To the Editor:

While the national debate about the top of the Democratic ticket in November is sucking so much oxygen out of our political room, it is easy to forget that there is more than one way to make sure the MAGA agenda does not have a chance to spread its intolerance and injustice across our great nation.

If we can make sure that we elect Democratic majorities to our Congress and our state legislatures, then Project 2025 priorities such as gutting our public education system, destroying our commitment to averting a climate catastrophe, privatizing Social Security and Medicare, appointing ideologues to the Supreme Court, and abandoning our important international defense alliances, have little chance of becoming the law of the land.

Our Massachusetts legislative delegation and state legislature remains committed to maintaining the rights and privileges so many groups have worked for over many generations. But candidates in other states, in swing districts in New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and North Carolina to name a few, need our help to mobilize local voters and ultimately protect our democracy.

I urge readers to call your friends in these states. Make social media posts they will read and understand. Join in with mail and phone banking efforts such as the Rural Freedom Network (ruralfreedomnetwork.org). Let's spread the word to keep our country on the right track.

Ross Jacobs
Chair, North Adams Democratic City Committee

Clarksburg Students Write in Support of Rural School Aid

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
07:25AM / Sunday, March 15, 2026

Mason Langenback calculated that Clarksburg would get almost $1 million if the $60 million was allocated equally.

CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Eighth-graders at Clarksburg School took a lesson in civic advocacy this week, researching school funding and writing letters to Beacon Hill that call for fulling funding rural school aid. 

 

The students focused on the hardships for small rural schools and their importance to the community — that they struggle with limited funding and teacher shortages, but offer safe and supportive spaces for learning and are a hub for community connections.

 

"They all address the main issue, the funding for rural schools, and how there's a gap, and there's the $4 million gap this year, and then it's about the $40 million next year, and that rural schools need that equitable funding," said social studies teacher Mark Karhan.

 

A rural schools report in 2022 found smaller school districts cost from nearly 17 percent to 23 percent more to operate, and recommended "at least" $60 million be appropriated annually for rural school aid. 

 

Gov. Maura Healey has filed for more Chapter 70 school aid, but that often is little help to small rural schools with declining or static enrollment. For fiscal 2027, she's budgeted $20 million for rural schools, up from around $13 million this year but still far below the hoped for $60 million. 

 

Karhan said the class was broken into four groups and the students were provided a submission letter from Rural Schools Advocacy. The students used the first paragraph, which laid out the funding facts, and then did research and wrote their own letters. 

 

They will submit those with a school picture to the governor.