This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
🌤️Mostly sunny and a touch warmer, with highs in the 50s. Sunset is at 4:17 p.m.
A little treat as we head into the weekend: enjoy the full video of cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing at GBH’s Boston Public Library studio. He played Bach’s Prelude and Gigue from the Third Orchestral Suite. For his latest tour, Yo-Yo Ma has invited colleagues to visit communities along his route and ask: Who is using culture — art, music, crafts and more — to strengthen their community?
“Optimism is a philosophy,” he told GBH’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. “I have to wake up every day and decide, once again: it’s worth it, you’ve got to do the work, which is what my late brother-in-law used to say. Do the work. Do the work.”
Tonight Ma will perform Bach’s cello suites at a concert titled “We The People: Celebrating Our Shared Humanity” at Boston’s Symphony Hall. Tickets are sold out, but the performance will be livestreamed for free at arts centers, libraries- and schools across the state. You can find more information about how to see it here.
Four Things to Know
1. Boston Public Schools officials are proposing to close three schools starting in 2027 due to declining enrollment. In December, the city’s school committee will vote on whether to close Lee Academy Pilot School, which has students from ages 3-8 near Codman Square in Dorchester; Community Academy of Science and Health high school in Dorchester’s Meeting House Hill; and Another Course to College pilot high school in Hyde Park.
Enrollment in the district has dropped from 53,000 in 2019 to 46,800 this year. Santiago Rivera, a parent organizer with the Collaborative Parent Leadership Action Network, said the closures are frustrating — especially for students with special needs. “We’re constantly shifting students around without a clear plan,” Rivera said. “We decide to close, we decide to merge and I feel like parents should be one of the first ones to be informed of this.”
2. A Worcester city councilor and a former school board candidate — both arrested while protesting at a federal immigration operation in the spring — will have to go to trial, a judge ruled this week.
City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj and Ashely Spring asked Judge Janet McGuiggan to review evidence — including police body camera footage (which you can see here) — and dismiss the charges without a jury trial.
3. What do Harvard students think about former university president Larry Summers stepping away from teaching after the House Oversight Committee released emails in which he sought advice on how to lure a mentee into sex from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein? Here’s one perspective: Harvard senior Eunice Chon, cofounder of the campus Feminist Coalition, said she knew Summers cared about undergraduates — but read the emails and saw him as potentially dangerous.
“I thought that was very clear,” she said. “Students are starting to get concerned about going to office hours, asking for feedback on papers, and building relationships with professors outside of class, and that is a core part of my undergraduate education.”
4. People who rely on the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program for help with their heating bills will have to wait longer. Trump administration officials say that, because of the federal government shutdown that ended last week, funds won’t be distributed until the end of November.
Massachusetts still has some federal heating assistance funds left over from last year, which the state will distribute to residents in need. “It is unacceptable to me that Massachusetts families and residents are going to go out with heating assistance that they are due from the federal government,” Gov. Maura Healey said yesterday. “So my message to Donald Trump is get that money out the door and get that money out the door today.”
Harvard football eyeing Ivy League championship, first-ever playoff berth in matchup against Yale
Tomorrow is the Harvard-Yale football game, the 141st matchup between the Ivy League New England foes. Yale has beaten Harvard for the past three years, but Harvard is on a hot streak this year, with an undefeated 9-0 record, hoping to topple their rivals at the Yale Bowl.
GBH’s Esteban Bustillos watched the Crimson practice this week and found a team preparing for the big game:music blasted from speakers at Harvard Stadium to mimic the crowd noise they’ll face in New Haven this weekend. They also added some motivation on the jumbotron — a photo of Yale fans storming the field after last season’s win.
“It’s a feeling I’ve been chasing, so I can’t say what it means to me,” quarterback Jaden Craig told Bustillos. “But I know it’s everything to this school.”
Senior safety Ty Bartrum is also determined to win.
“I can’t go 0-3 against Yale, it’s as simple as that,” he said. “So, I refuse to lose the game.”
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