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☀️Sunny and hotter, with highs in the 80s. Don’t forget to drink water today. Sunset is at 8:17 p.m.

Today Massachusetts legislators will vote on a bill that could change cannabis regulations. The Cannabis Control Commission has seen a lot of turmoil in the last year, with commissioners leaving and the commission facing criticisms over their effectiveness.

The bill also has higher caps on how many licenses dispensaries can hold, a law which former Cannabis Control Commission member Shaleen Title said was originally put in place to keep smaller businesses afloat.

“And that has largely been successful because of this limit where one person or company can only own up to three licenses,” Title said. “If this bill passes and it allows that limit to be raised to six, that’s going to facilitate market concentration.”

Four Things to Know

1. A bill to undo a ban on red light cameras in Massachusetts is gaining steam. That bill would allow individual cities and towns to install cameras that would capture photos of drivers running red lights, and for municipalities to issue fines of $25-$150.

State. Sen. William Brownsberger, who introduced the bill’s senate version, said he’s been hearing from constituents who want more traffic enforcement. “They’re walking their babies across a street that people are blasting along and ignoring the red lights, and they’re begging for some enforcement,” he said.

2. Gov. Maura Healey yesterday told lawmakers she’d like to borrow almost $3 billion for upgrades to public colleges and universities in Massachusetts. At a bond bill hearing, she said the projects could create 20,000 construction jobs on campuses in the UMass system, nine state universities, and 15 community colleges, GBH’s Katie Lannan reports.

“But beyond job creation, these investments will equip our campuses — and thereby equip the state — to meet the needs of employers and the workforce today and tomorrow: cutting edge classrooms, labs, industry aligned training spaces,” Healey said. Her request is now in the hands of legislators. If the legislature declines to fund the upgrades, some costs would likely be passed along to students through fees, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said.

3. Cape Air announced flights between New Bedford and Boston Logan, two airports less than 50 miles apart. The airline is planning four flights a day starting in September at $99 for a one-way ticket. The flights would take about 35 minutes (not including security checks, boarding time, and so on) and are marketed as a way for people on the South Coast to get to longer flights from Logan without driving or taking the MBTA’s South Coast commuter rail line.

“Really what people were looking for is they were tired of driving all the way to Logan. Or all the way to Providence Green Airport in Rhode Island to catch a flight to other points in the country and internationally as well,” Cape Air Vice President of Planning Aaron Blinka told GBH’s Diane Adame.

4. Two weeks from today will mark 250 years since the Battle of Bunker Hill. For this occasion, an exhibit at the Commonwealth Museum in Dorchester’s Columbia Point is displaying some revolutionary artifacts.

“Many people don’t know Paul Revere actually sent a bill for services for his ride,” Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin told GBH’s Saraya Wintersmith. “We have the bill.” A scanned copy of the invoice — in loopy, inky handwriting — is also on the museum’s website.

More colleges are helping students earn as they learn with apprenticeships

Jacqueline Rivera is on track to graduate debt-free from a two-year automotive technician program at Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology in Boston. Every week she takes 10 hours of classes and spends 32 hours working as an apprentice at a Subaru dealership.

“I’m still learning the theory and everything while I am in school,” Rivera said. “But I’m also able to learn from the people that have already been in the field for years.” She hopes the experience, coupled with her education, will help her land a good-paying job — and finally afford a car of her own.

Apprenticeships have existed for hundreds of years, but these days they’re less common than other methods of career training here: the U.S. has 680,000 registered apprentices, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and about 19 million college students.

The number of registered apprentices doesn’t count things like paid college internships. A study from the Business-Higher Education Forum estimated that 3.6 million students took on internships in 2023, but that another 4.6 million wanted internships, but could not get one or afford to take one on.

With college costs rising, some schools are looking at apprenticeships as a way to entice more students who would not otherwise be able to afford to enroll.

“Do you want to spend $50,000 on your education — perhaps a year if you’re in a private school — or do you want to make $20,000 to $50,000 a year while you’re learning?” said Vinz Koller, a vice president at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future. “That’s a pretty easy answer, I think, for most people.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in April calling for a plan for more apprenticeships. His administration has also cut budgets and departments that have funded such programs.

Current funding models for colleges don’t necessarily encourage colleges to push for on-the-job learning, said Shalin Jyotishi, who researches the future of work at the think tank New America.

“The funding formulas for higher education prioritize credit-bearing programs that lead to degree completion,” Jyotishi said. “Degree completion is the metric that many institutions of higher education stack themselves up against.”

Read Kirk Carapezza’s full reporting here. 

More from the College Uncovered podcast:

-Apprentices of the World, Unite!

-US colleges need international students. Trump’s policies may drive them away.