With a statewide referendum looming in November, Massachusetts voters will have to decide just how much school privatization they’re willing to bear. What happens when charter schools begin to proliferate in traditional public school districts? In Massachusetts, where K-12 alternatives have had more than two decades to metastasize, it means millions less in annual funding […]
UNACCOMMODATING: A BLS STORY
The Hub’s most elite high school has been under growing scrutiny for its apparent neglect to properly address a culture of racial intolerance. While federal investigators probe that issue, this story of a former Boston Latin School student with special needs raises additional points of concern about another minority population at BLS. It was near the end […]
SPECIAL REJECTION
Election officials can’t stop this East Boston activist from running for State Senate When nine-year First Suffolk and Middlesex State Sen. Anthony Petruccelli announced his resignation last December, Latino voters in the lawmaker’s disjointed district — which includes slices of Chinatown, East Boston, and the North End in the Hub, as well as parts of Winthrop, Cambridge, and […]
OF BOLIVAR AND BOSTON
Social and economic insecurity in Caracas has a significant impact on Venezuelans in Massachusetts One late March morning, corridos — the socially conscious ballads popular throughout Central and Latin America — blared throughout the blue and gold basement chapel of Tremont Temple Baptist Church. About 21 people mingled around a table of coffee and breakfast pastries, exchanging pleasantries in Spanish, […]
BOSTON’S MARATHON APOCALYPSE
In hashing out what happened on that dark day three years ago, it’s important to consider the Bay State’s history as an apocalyptic ground zero There is no shining beacon on the hill in Boston. There is a shiny gold dome capping the Massachusetts State House just a short walk down to the site of […]