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🥶Breezy and cold, with possible flurries and highs in the 30s. Sunset for the next nine days will be at 4:11 p.m., the earliest it will be all year.
Meet the 2026 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year: Tara Goodhue, a science teacher at Lowell High School.
She earned the honor by involving her students in the process. They helped her plan a lesson she submitted to the contest last year. Goodhue learned about the accolade over the summer but had to keep it a secret from her students until now.
“I told them they were the best chemistry class in the school and to be ready to come to this presentation and a reception afterward, and they were just thrilled,” Goodhue told GBH News reporter Diane Adame. “I think that they are sharing in the joy and they realize that they were a part of this and they’re really proud of themselves as well as just being happy for me.”
Her win means Lowell High School science department will get a $10,000 prize, and Goodhue will be the Massachusetts candidate for the National Teacher of the Year Award.
Four Things to Know
1. Because of a delay in federal funding, Boston landlords who rent to tenants receiving Section 8 housing assistance will receive only 25% of their usual payment. Boston Housing Authority officials said they hope to send the remaining funds next week but have not yet received confirmation on when the money will be available.
Michael Kane, director of the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants, said he worries about the long-term impact of the delay. “They’re not cutting tenants now, they’re cutting payments to landlords with the expectation that the money will come from Washington in time,” Kane said.
2. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is once again pushing to raise the city’s commercial property tax rate, saying the move would help reduce what residential property owners pay. To make the change, she needs approval from the state legislature, where a similar proposal failed last year. Starting Jan. 1, Boston homeowners will see their bills rise by 13% — about $780 on average for a single-family home.
State Rep. Russell Holmes of Boston said he supports the plan: “Do we want to levy more money on communities like where I live over on Blue Avenue, put more tax burden on a very challenged community, or do we want to have that tax burden a little bit more shared on some of these very wealthy people?” he told GBH News reporter Saraya Wintersmith.
3. As they say in Ireland, dia duit to a new visitor: researchers from the Center for Coastal Studies have spotted a North Atlantic right whale about 23 miles away from Boston’s shores. They believe it’s the same whale last seen in July 2024 off the coast of Ireland. Researchers identified him by a scar on his head, with help from the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group.
While scientists have documented right whales traveling from North America to Europe, this is the first recorded case of one making the trip in the opposite direction.
4. Boston’s Professional Women’s Hockey League team, the Fleet, is heading to a bigger stage: TD Garden, where they’ll face the Montréal Victoire on April 11. The team usually plays at the Tsongas Center in Lowell, which seats about 6,500. The Garden can hold up to 17,850 fans for hockey games.
Fans “deserve to be able to watch our team play in an atmosphere like that,” Fleet GM Danielle Marmer said. “... So we’ll just have fingers crossed that we’ll get to play there a few more times.”
Local immigrants prepare guardianship paperwork in case they’re detained by ICE
Debora Ramirez of New Bedford is one of the immigrant parents in Massachusetts trying to prepare for a terrifying possibility: what would happen if federal immigration agents detained her and took her away from her children?
“We all have that same terror, that same fear of everything that is happening,” said Ramirez, who came from Guatemala and has been in Massachusetts for 20 years, in an interview with GBH News reporter Sarah Betancourt. “This is something difficult for us to make a decision like this, but we still have to do it.”
Ramirez has a pending asylum case and checks in with ICE agents as part of the process. She recently signed legal paperwork to make a formal plan: if she and her partner are detained, her oldest daughter, who is in her late 20s, will have guardianship over the family’s two younger children, who are underage.
Ramirez said she felt like it was a decision she had to make.
“I filled out the form,” she told Betancourt, crying. “As a mother, it deeply saddened me. But you want to take care of your children in the best way. But it’s like letting go of a piece of yourself.”
Betancourt spoke with advocates across the state who are helping immigrants and their families prepare for the possibility of detention: getting kids passports in case their parents are deported; registering children who are U.S. citizens with their parents’ countries of origin; talking through plans in an age-appropriate ways; and setting up legal guardianships. (Earlier this fall she also spoke with young adults who have had to provide for their families after their parents were detained.)
“I think there is more of a sense of emergency to encourage families to have these elements in place,” said Corinn Williams, executive director of the New Bedford’s Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts. “Once they come to that decision to do this, they’re empowered at the same time of saying, ‘yeah, I’m kind of taking control over this really difficult situation.”’
You can dig deeper into the story and the legal options involved here.
Dig deeper:
-‘It’s my responsibility’: In the wake of ICE raids, youth support their families
-Mass. immigrants who had legal status lose work in home and health care
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