Corruption cases, and attempted prosecutions, were once regular headlines in Somerville. The recent bribery conviction of a one-time local power broker, with echoes of another era, came and went without much fanfare.
CW in Depth
Posted inEducation
Is tutoring the answer to pandemic learning loss?
Tutoring has a stronger base of solid positive evidence than almost any other school intervention, but joins lots of other innovations in education that seem to offer great promise but have been stubbornly difficult to implement at the kind of scale that would really drive population-wide improvements.
Posted inEducation
Boston schools grudgingly release some sexual misconduct data
The numbers, which were released grudgingly after a six-month public records battle, begin to paint a picture of how prevalent sexual misconduct, bullying, and biased-based incidents are in the Boston schools.
Posted inHousing
Yes, building more housing does lower rents, study says
Does increasing the supply of housing, even if it’s mainly higher-cost, market-priced units, temper the runup in costs that has so many residents straining to make ends meet? The idea follows the basic economic principle of supply and demand – when more of something is made available, its price falls. But there are plenty of “supply skeptics” who aren’t convinced that simply opening the housing production spigot will lower costs, and argue instead that it often just drives up prices by promoting gentrification.
Posted inEnvironment
‘Re-wilding’ Massachusetts cranberry bogs
As Massachusetts’ famous cranberry industry consolidates and some of the cranberry bogs fade out of use, famers, governments, and conservationists are increasingly eager to start “re-wilding” them to natural rivers and wetlands.
Posted inPolitics
At 90, Michael Dukakis still looks ahead
Michael Dukakis remade the Massachusetts Democratic Party, suffered a bitter loss after winning his party’s nomination for president, then spent three decades teaching college students and preaching the virtues of public service, something he has modeled for more than six decades.
Posted inTransportation
Why did MassDOT hang T employees out to dry?
A Boston Globe story on employees working long-distance at the MBTA had 4 corrections. The employees who were incorrectly targeted and the reporter who lost her job were victims of a state bureaucracy that failed to stand up for its workers.
Posted inEnergy, Environment
Brayton Point offshore wind prize in doubt
ONE OF THE BIGGEST prizes of the emerging offshore wind industry – an onshore subsea cable manufacturing facility providing jobs, tax revenue, and the beginnings of a US supply chain – is in danger of slipping away at Somerset’s Brayton Point because of a dispute over a zoning condition. Prysmian Group, based in Italy, is […]
Posted inState Government
State Police escorts sometimes involve political favors
JUST OVER A YEAR AGO, on a busy Monday afternoon around 2 p.m., the State Police shut down the heavily congested southbound lanes of the Southeast Expressway in Boston starting near South Bay so they could escort a hearse carrying the remains of a Randolph police officer from the state medical examiner’s office to a […]
Posted inEnvironment
A sea change on managed retreat?
AS WATERS RISE, coastal residents are increasingly facing a difficult choice: try to relocate in a difficult housing market and take losses on their homes, or get comfortable with a future where there may be multiple feet of water in their living rooms. “Eventually people are going to move, either of their own volition or […]