The Massachusetts Teachers Association has positioned itself as perhaps the most aggressive foe of a charter school expansion in the state.

Barbara Madeloni, the fiery president of the union, has pledged an all-out fight. “We’re going to put everything we’ve got into it,’’ she said last month.

But the union is not quite ready to make the full investment.

Over the weekend, the union’s board of directors slowed approval of an aggressive, $9.6 million plan to fight legislation and a related ballot measure aimed at lifting the state’s cap on charter schools.

Instead, the panel provided interim funding to get the grass-roots portion of the campaign started, pushing a decision on the larger budget to a much bigger body — the MTA delegates, who will hold their annual meeting in May at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

The move set off a round of recriminations within the union. Deborah McCarthy, chairwoman of the MTA’s government relations committee, took to Facebook to excoriate the board for making the decision in executive session, out of public view.

“I was crying as I shared with you how embarrass[ing] it was to be thrown out of the room,’’ she wrote. “At a time when we needed to push internal politicking aside and fight tooth and nail for our teachers and students, we were acting like a superintendent or Charlie Baker were running our board.’’

Janet Anderson, a member of the board who is challenging Madeloni for the union presidency, replied in her own post that she voted against going into executive session. But she wrote that the plan approved by the panel, pushing the final decision to the MTA delegates, “is an example of democracy at its best.’’

And while the panel instructed the MTA to participate in legislative negotiations over charter schools, she wrote, that does not mean a retreat from the union’s hard-line opposition to lifting the cap. “I want to make clear that the Board’s decision . . . does not include a call for a compromise. Period.’’

The debate over funding the anticharter campaign comes as the US Supreme Court is deciding a case that could significantly weaken public-sector unions, eliminating requirements that workers join the unions and pay fees.

Madeloni, in an interview this week, declined to speak directly to the impact of the Supreme Court case on MTA’s decision-making. But she said the best way to maintain solidarity is to be a “fighting union.’’

“We’re doing well,’’ she said. “We’re strong.’’

She also voiced confidence that the MTA would fully fund the anti-charter campaign.

David Scharfenberg

A fight Rosenberg didn’t need

Senate President Stan Rosenberg thought he was heading back to his Western Massachusetts district to meet with constituents and talk about charter schools. Little did he know he was walking into a buzz saw.

Before it was all over, a local charter school principal was charging that he had been barred from the meeting. Rosenberg had to scramble to distance himself from the gathering — and he canceled his appearance at a follow-up meeting scheduled for this Friday.

It all began when word got out in the local media that Rosenberg was meeting in Greenfield Jan. 22 with educators and education activists to talk about the controversial push on Beacon Hill to lift the state cap on the number of charter schools. He had been invited by an anticharter group — Public Funds for Public Schools — to meet in a private home.

When Peter Garbus, the principal of the Four Rivers Charter Public School, showed up at the private residence where the event was to take place, he said he was told “that I was not welcome’’ and attendance was by invitation only.

He said he was led to believe — in part from statements made by Rosenberg’s office — that the Senate leader was coming to his community to have an open and frank dialogue.

“However, what happened in Greenfield . . . was a partisan, closed-door meeting to organize opposition to charter schools,’’ Garbus wrote to Rosenberg the day after the meeting.

Rosenberg, realizing he had been unwittingly caught up in a conflict he didn’t need — particularly as he is trying to craft a consensus in the Senate to deal with the red-hot education issue — moved quickly to distance himself from fray.

He immediately canceled his appearance at follow-up session in Amherst. And his aides quickly got the word out that his office had nothing to do with organizing the sessions.

His chief of staff, Natasha Perez, insisted Rosenberg was not aware that the Greenfield meeting, which had been touted in the local media as a public session, was private.

“He obviously doesn’t want to be in a public meeting in which people are excluded,’’ Perez said. “But he also will meet with either side privately if that’s the forum they want.’’

Frank Phillips

From the streets to the boardroom

When he was a community activist, a city councilor, and a school committeeman representing the interests of his native East Boston, John Nucci was on the streets railing against Massport and its encroachments on his neighborhood, famously bitter battles that went on between the surrounding communities and the ever-expanding airport.

But the older and wiser Nucci — now the senior vice president for external affairs at Suffolk University — is getting into the belly of the beast, having just become the first nongubernatorial appointee to the MassPort board since the authority’s creation a half century ago.

It’s a big change from the streets to the boardroom.

Fighting the authority was in Nucci’s blood. His father was on the front lines of the fights against Massport’s growing impact on East Boston.

“I grew up hanging around on Bayswater Street,’’ he said. “We looked out at the airport every day. It’s hard to imagine being more impacted than that.’’

And he hasn’t moved out of the neighborhood. “I look out my window and I see the runway field and I hear the planes overhead,’’ he said. “So I know what it is like to be impacted by Logan Airport.’’

Nucci is the choice of the Massport Community Advisory Committee which, under a 2013 statute, has been allowed to occupy one the seven board seats. Mayor Martin J. Walsh appointed Nucci to the committee last November to be its Boston representative.

Don’t expect fireworks in the boardroom. Nucci, whose job in part is to ease the tensions between Suffolk and its neighbors, say he wants to work with the authority to ensure that “smart growth and expansion’’ can occur with a minimum of impact on surrounding neighborhoods.

Frank Phillips

Walsh heads north — with 1,000 volunteers

Mayor Martin J. Walsh is heading to New Hampshire this weekend with more than 1,000 volunteers to stump for Hillary Clinton, as Tuesday’s vote nears in the Democratic presidential primary, a Walsh spokesman said.

Walsh, who endorsed Clinton in the fall, has already made three trips to the Granite State to campaign for the former secretary of state — serving as a surrogate at one campaign event and bringing along volunteers, said Michael Goldman, the mayor’s campaign spokesman.

“He personally has been up there three times,’’ Goldman said. “He’s done extensive door-knocking all over, especially in the Manchester area.’’

Since the start of January, more than 1,500 Walsh-Clinton volunteers have been to New Hampshire, Goldman added.

The Clinton campaign confirmed that Walsh and at least 100 volunteers been visiting the Manchester area weekly.

Indeed, the mayor’s political machine has been churning for Clinton. The head of his Office of Women’s Advancement, Megan Costello, and the chief of staff for civic engagement, Daniel Manning, have been organizing weekly bus trips to New Hampshire, Goldman said. Both have been doing the work on their own time, Goldman stressed.

Walsh’s former chief of staff Joseph Rull is also campaigning for Clinton, out of the Manchester office. Rull was field director for Walsh’s 2013 mayoral campaign and now runs a private consulting business, Goldman added.

Meghan E. Irons

Councilor proposes 4-year terms

It’s a well-known political pattern: A Boston city councilor works for a full year and then spends the next year running for reelection.

Councilor Frank Baker is trying to change that. He’s reintroduced a measure that would double the time councilors stay in their jobs, from two years to four.

“When I was first elected, I didn’t think two years was long enough. We end up working towards our election instead of just working to do our jobs,’’ said Baker, who represents much of Dorchester.

Baker, who heads the council’s Charter Reform Committee, said a four-year term will allow councilors to focus on the job rather than on being reelected.

That measure is one of three reforms Baker is seeking. He is also proposing that if councilors run for mayor, they can’t also run to keep their council seat. The measure appears to be a dig at former councilor Charles Yancey, who ran for mayor in 2013 while also running to keep his council seat. He got more votes as councilor than he did mayor.

Baker is also proposing another tweak to the rules: If an at-large councilor leaves after a year, then a special election should be held to find a replacement.

Four of the 13 members on the council serve in at-large positions.

Baker first introduced the measures last fall, but said he “ran out of time’’ and did not take any action on them. He refiled them last week and plans to begin holding hearings soon, he said.

Meghan E. Irons