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☀️Sunny and warmer as the day goes on, with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 7 p.m. Some Boston landmarks will light up in blue tonight in remembrance of the people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Now that the electoral dust has settled, GBH’s Adam Reilly has some thoughts about Tuesday’s preliminary election for mayor and city council in Boston. One race to watch as we head toward November’s general election isn’t the mayoral contest between incumbent Michelle Wu and Josh Kraft, but rather the battle among the eight remaining at-large city council candidates vying for the top four spots in citywide representation. Former City Councilor Frank Baker, who previously represented parts of Dorchester before declining to seek reelection in 2023, came in fifth in Tuesday’s preliminary for the citywide seats. “Baker’s job may be made more difficult by the fact that he was an especially sharp Wu critic during his previous council tenure — a stance which Wu’s 49-point win suggests could simply put him out of step with Boston’s citywide electorate,” Adam writes.
Four Things to Know
1. A federal judge in Boston ruled that Boston Children’s Hospital does not have to hand over the medical records of transgender patients who received gender-affirming care to the Department of Justice. The Trump administration had argued they wanted information, including patient records, to investigate possible fraud, but U.S. District Judge Myong Joun said the subpoena was “motivated only by bad faith.”
“It is abundantly clear that the true purpose of issuing the subpoena is to interfere with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ right to protect GAC [gender-affirming care] within its borders, to harass and intimidate BCH [Boston Children’s Hospital] to stop providing such care, and to dissuade patients from seeking such care,” Joun wrote.
2. What happens at Market Basket now that the company’s board has voted to fire CEO Arthur T. Demoulas? Board chair Jay K. Hachigian said that “Market Basket will not change its operations, profit-sharing, bonuses or culture, and will continue to offer the best groceries at the lowest prices anywhere in New England — well into the future.”
A spokesperson for Demoulas called it a “farcical cover up for a coup.” “All of this is in clear violation of their fiduciary duty – they took a company that was operating at peak performance and recklessly threw it into turmoil, and did so in a needlessly public manner and on baseless grounds fabricated from the start,” spokesperson Justine Griffin said.
3. As many as 200,000 people in Massachusetts could lose their health insurance under two new Medicaid (locally known as MassHealth) work requirements, according to a study from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation.
“Just these two provisions alone have the potential to increase our uninsurance rate by more than 50 percent,” said Kaitlyn Kenney Walsh, the foundation’s vice president of policy and research. “But there are [also] many other harmful provisions that will really unravel the gains Massachusetts has made in getting to near universal health insurance coverage,” she said.
4. Worcester’s city council voted against a measure giving the city’s fire chief authority to make sure buildings getting significant renovations have sprinkler systems installed. Right now, the city’s inspectional services department is responsible for making sure the sprinklers are in place in any new buildings with more than three units, or in older buildings getting a major renovation. About 200 communities in Massachusetts allow their fire chiefs to enforce that code.
“There remains a small segment of older buildings where current codes may leave room for interpretation, particularly in the case of substantial renovations,” Councilor Etel Haxhiaj said, arguing in favor of the measure before it failed.
Behind the bill: when should Massachusetts high schools start their day?
By Katie Lannan, GBH News
Teenagers just aren’t wired to be up that early. That’s the idea behind a bill Massachusetts lawmakers are considering that would require high schools across the state to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. Middle schools, under this bill, couldn’t start their day before 8 a.m.
There are a lot of districts where that first bell comes before 8 a.m., so it could be a substantial shift.
Supporters of later start times point to research that shows sleep cycles shift in adolescence. Teens, they say, are getting their best sleep between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. The American Academy of Pediatrics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association recommend that 8:30 start time.
There’s not a vocal “stop the teens from sleeping in” lobby, but there are logistical issues in a lot of places. Elementary, middle and high school start times are staggered so districts don’t need to staff and pay for three sets of buses. And if you switch the schedule so that the naturally early risers in the younger grades go first, they’d be getting out earlier in the afternoon, when there may not be anyone at home to watch them.
Plus, when you factor in sport practices and other extracurriculars, there’s concern that a later start could mean high schoolers end up staying at school well into the evening.
Some communities already have later start times: Newton, where high school starts at 9 a.m., put years of planning into the shift with family and faculty surveys, plus cost and traffic studies. They found that families at all grades preferred an 8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. school day, but they needed to keep that staggered busing structure in place to keep costs in line so had to stick with varied times.
Westford made the switch this year, pushing their high school start from 7:25 to 8 a.m. and working closely with their athletic director so there would be minimal impact on sports schedules.
For what it’s worth: Tony Mullin, a school committee member in the town of Westwood and Massachusetts chapter leader for the advocacy group Start School Later, said students in his town were the least supportive at first often because they worried about later school days cutting into their hours at part-time jobs. But he also said his daughter was able to get about 45 minutes more sleep a night after the shift, and teachers quickly saw an impact in their early-morning classes.
So how likely is this bill to pass? It’s still before the Education Committee, and it’s unclear whether the committee will vote to advance or bury it. Versions of this legislation, either making the start time change, or calling for a task force to study it, have been filed for years now without getting over the finish line, and it’s not something the top lawmakers who control the flow of bills have flagged as a priority.
Beacon Hill is often wary of mandates that could add costs or undermine local control — but we’ve also seen the Legislature step in to set statewide policies when an issue gains momentum across multiple towns. Stay tuned.
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