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🥵 No break in the heat, with highs around 97. Sunset is at 8:06 p.m.

Today we look at how our GBH colleague Paul Singer uncovered a story revealing how disorganized bureaucracy, paper records, cash payments and poor communication led to a Randolph dance teacher, her staff and other businesses working with the city’s school system going unpaid for months.

By mid June, the unpaid invoices totaled more than $1 million. Now the city and schools are reworking their payment systems and have promised to pay everyone by the end of this week.

“No one even called us to say, ‘we’re having issues in our finance department,’” said Sophia Haynes-Cardwell, executive director of Stajez Cultural Arts Center, the dance program that went unpaid for three months (and kept teaching students the whole time). “There was just no communication at all. The lack of consideration for my staff that I had to pay…there was none.”

Four Things to Know

1. Local immigration lawyers say they’re seeing an increase in federal agents detaining young people who are legally in the U.S. under the designation Special Immigrant Juvenile status — a protection meant for immigrants under 21 who were abused or neglected by their families in their home countries.

There are about 5,000 people in Massachusetts with that legal status — one of them a 21-year-old from Brazil, recently released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to his lawyer, Annelise Araujo. He was detained despite having two valid legal statuses. “We have seen an increasing number of arrests of individuals with Special Immigrant Juvenile status. So it is a pattern,” Araujo said.

2. An update: after almost a month of delays and a lawsuit by 23 states (including Massachusetts), the Trump administration announced Monday that it will be releasing $6.8 billion in education grants nationwide — $107 million to Massachusetts schools and programs. 

The money will support after-school programs, classroom materials and programs focusing on bullying intervention and mental health.

3. A bill that would let student athletes forfeit a match without penalty if a player of a different sex is on the opposing team is stalling in committee at the Massachusetts state house, after Democrats voted against advancing it.

The bill does not mention trans youth or gender identity, but in February its supporters from the Massachusetts Family Institute said they supported President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting trans women and girls in sports.

4. A Massachusetts commission looking into continuing care retirement communities — which provide residents with options for stepping up the level of care as their needs change over time — will recommend that lawmakers require those communities to give residents more information when they move in. Some commission members said they’re disappointed the commission’s final recommendations don’t go further: they had pushed for a number of recommendations, including a mandate that governing boards of these kinds of communities include at least one resident. But the commission’s industry members objected.

“My problem, of course, is there are no meaningful recommendations,” attorney John Ford, who was appointed to the commission by the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, told GBH’s Craig LeMoult. “So it boils down to the status quo.” “It’s frustrating that I spent a lot of my time working on this, and talking to my fellow residents and reporting to them what was going on,” said Christine Griffin, a commission member who lives in a continuing care community. “And now having to go back to them and say, ‘well, here’s what came out of this.’”

How I got the story: Randolph resumes paying bills after tense standoff between town and schools

By Paul Singer

One of the key lessons of journalism is: Just show up.

You never quite know what you are going to find until you get there and look around.

Somebody told me to tune into a Randolph, Massachusetts Town Council meeting in March, where a “sanctuary town/welcoming town” resolution was supposed to be discussed. So I logged in over Zoom and settled in with a plate of dinner to watch.

The resolution never came up. Instead, Councillor Jimmy Burgess made a dramatic proposal to kick the school finance director out of the town’s accounting system. A colleague asked why this was needed. “Because she opened a bank account in her own name, and somebody else’s name, with town funds and with no authorization to do so.”

I put my fork down.

This was a town councillor in open session essentially accusing a town official of corruption.

Thus began my four month journey down the Randolph rabbit hole. I made a half dozen public records requests, attended a half dozen town council meetings, weaved my way through lawyers and other spokespeople and wound up with a complex story about a town at war with its own school system.

This was not just a story about bureaucratic infighting. Vendors doing business with the schools did not get paid for weeks or sometimes months, and people who worked for those vendors missed paychecks.

The story wound up not being about corruption; instead it was about the business of governing. And even — or perhaps especially? — in a fairly small town like Randolph, the business of governing has real, human stakes.

Read the full story here.