Massachusetts Advocates for Children — Advancing Educational Equity Across the State

Executive Director Anna Krieger, Esq. Will Be Featured Speaker at 2025 Eastern Mass. Grantee Reception

Classrooms across Massachusetts reflect the breadth of diversity in the state’s communities. Based on their background and experiences, students bring unique strengths, perspectives, and potential to their school communities as well as wide-ranging needs. Yet far too often, children — particularly those with disabilities, from immigrant families, or from historically marginalized communities — face barriers that limit their full participation or result in their exclusion from classrooms altogether. Through a multi-level approach, Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC) works to break down those barriers and ensure that every student has the support to thrive in the classroom.

MAC assists families directly through its free Helpline, empowering them to know their rights and advocate for their children. In cases requiring more support, MAC’s attorneys, along with a growing network of pro bono partners, work to provide families with full representation. At the same time, MAC tracks broader patterns and leverages those insights to drive systemic change.

Because its advocacy is rooted in families' lived experiences, MAC has a finger on the pulse of what most impacts communities — whether or not it’s making headlines. That perspective shapes MAC’s policy work, enabling the organization to influence regulations with long-lasting impact and to push for legislative change at the State House.

“All of this is really about partnership and collaboration, and at the center is always the voice of the students and the families,” said Attorney Anna Krieger, Executive Director of MAC.

Before joining MAC in 2023, Krieger spent her career as a legal aid lawyer focused on disability rights and justice. She started out with direct service work before gradually shifting toward systemic advocacy. “When the opportunity came to join MAC and be part of an organization that works in that exact way on issues that I care about for the population that I’m so passionate about serving, it was a perfect fit,” said Krieger.

“From my career, I saw that you really can’t do the systemic work if you don’t understand and work alongside and with the community that you’re serving,” she continued. “That’s really the ethos of MAC since its founding.”

Founded in 1969, MAC emerged in response to a school system that routinely excluded students rather than accommodating them. The organization has been a grantee of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation for over 25 years. Today, it continues the mission of ensuring all children have access to quality education. “We know that kids can thrive if they’re getting what they need,” said Krieger.

“First, you have to be able to walk in the classroom door. Then, you have to be taught in the way that works for you — whether that’s because of your language, your race, your disability, or your income. You need to get the right supports that are appropriate for you.”

In recent years, this work has meant expanded support for immigrant youth as many families have migrated to Massachusetts. “We’re constantly making sure we are meeting the most urgent community needs, and so, we had previously expanded our work with newcomer families,” said Krieger.

“There was obviously a great need to provide families with basics like shelter and food. And at the same time, we knew from experience those families also had children with education issues — often with an identified disability related issue.”

This fall, she noted, students have faced new barriers to accessing education. “School enrollment issues at the start of this 2025 school year were rampant in a way they haven’t been before. We’re also seeing an uptick in school discipline issues and students being afraid to go to school because of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) threats.”

Other challenges are unfolding more gradually and are expected to have long term effects. “There are things like the rolling back of different federal protections for education,” Krieger said. “As structures such as the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights get eroded or undermined by a Presidential administration that doesn’t value them, it’s not something that we’ve ever seen.”

MAC remains prepared to stand up for students and families even when federal protections fall short. “That’s why we are focused on systemic reforms,” Krieger said. “We will help as many individual families as we can, and building on that, we’ll quickly pivot to the systemic issues that we can tackle to protect kids across Massachusetts.”

Education access impacts everyone. When schools are structured to provide students with the support they need, families and communities are strengthened. Krieger emphasized the importance of coming together to build a better system, underscoring that cultural change is just as essential as legal reform.

“It takes much more than one organization, group of organizations, or entire legal aid community to change schools,” she said. “The legal part of it can change the underpinnings, but it’s bigger than that. I would love and invite people to challenge themselves to think about what they can do in their own community to transform a student’s life or an experience at school in some small way.”

Anna Krieger will be the grantee speaker at the Massachusetts Bar Foundation’s Eastern Massachusetts Grantee Reception on October 16. Register today to hear more about how MAC is advancing educational equity and ensuring that every student in Massachusetts has the chance to succeed.