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The Massachusetts workforce needs people with vocational and technical skills for jobs in kitchens, as HVAC technicians, cosmetologists and IT experts. And the state has more than 30 vocational and technical high schools ready to teach those skills.
The problem is that there are more students applying for those schools than classroom spots — and the new application system, through which students are selected by lottery, is leaving kids and their parents upset that they didn’t get admitted.
GBH’s Hannah Reale spoke with parents who are frustrated their children were not selected for the programs they wanted and who say the new lottery system, designed to make the admissions process more equitable, can be extra upsetting for students who really want to attend voc-tech schools and were not admitted.“I get that the goal is fairness,” said Melissa Murphy, whose eighth grader was waitlisted for an equine science program. “But I think to go from it being an open system where you apply and you say why you’re applying, it just seems like a drastic jump from one extreme to the other.”
Brian Dezurick, an attorney at Metrowest Legal Services who works with students with disabilities, said the state should focus on creating more spots at those schools. “Every student deserves to have the right to access vocational education, because vocational education unlocks so many opportunities for students,” Dezurick said. “The other piece is these students having success once they’re actually going to the schools.” Reale spoke with more voc-tech educators about admitting students — and making sure they get the education they signed up for.
Four Things to Know
1. Three immigration judges in Massachusetts found out Friday that the Trump administration was firing them. One of them is Roopal Patel, the Boston-based judge who ruled that Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk should not be deported after she co-authored a pro-Palestinian op-ed in the student paper. Another is Nina Froes, a Chelmsford-based judge who dismissed the deportation case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student who was detained despite having a green card. Both judges were appointed by former President Joe Biden and were within the probationary period of their first two years on the job.
Unlike judges in other courts, immigration judges work for the executive branch, not the judicial branch. “I think I could have ruled either way in that case and probably would have still ended up fired, just given the patterns of the firings,” Patel said. As she sees it, the firings were “informed by a kind of political agenda to kind of reshape the immigration bench to reflect the policy agenda of the current administration to be one of mass deportations.”
2. Some Boston Symphony Orchestra patrons are handing out roses and asking for petition signatures outside orchestra performances in protest of the BSO’s announcement that it is looking to replace Music Director Andris Nelsons. “It’s just been really well-received as a small gesture that’s both peaceful and poignant. We’re being loud in our own way, and we’re trying to be sensitive to the institution because we respect it,” said George Whiting, co-coordinator of the BSO Patron Action Network.
The orchestra’s board announced last month that it would part ways with Nelsons after the 2026-27 season. In a statement, board members said their vision for the orchestra’s future differs from Nelsons’. “While the trustees have communicated with the orchestra that their decision regarding Andris Nelsons’ contract will not be reversed, we respect and share the petitioners’ passionate desire for the musicians and the community to have a meaningful voice in shaping the BSO’s future,” an orchestra spokesperson said.
3. Candelaria Silva-Collins, who used the arts as a means of economic development in Roxbury, died of cancer in North Carolina last month. She was 71. Silva-Collins lived in Boston for 50 years and was instrumental in the creation of Hibernian Hall’s performance space, Roxbury Open Studios and what’s now the Roxbury International Film Festival.
“I think Candelaria was a visionary,” said Kelley Chunn, founding chair of the Roxbury Cultural District, speaking to the Bay State Banner. “Giving artists a voice I think is one of her strongest contributions to our community — through film, visual arts and literature.”
4. Fenway Park this weekend hosted its first-ever game of beep baseball, an adaptive take on the game for blind or low-vision athletes. The ball is a one-pound softball that has a beeping mechanism inside, so players can follow it by ear, and the bases buzz. The Boston Renegades beat the Boston Strong by a score of 19-2.
“When we were little, we aspired or hoped that someday we would be baseball players for the Boston Red Sox. Unfortunately, with our vision impairments, we weren’t able to even play Little League,” said Joe Quintanilla, Boston Strong head coach and player. “So having the opportunity, through beep baseball, [to] hit a ball that’s actually being pitched to us and run full speed to a buzzing base at the famed Fenway Park is really exciting.”
Boston-area theologians: Pope Leo follows long tradition in addressing global issues
Three comments GBH’s Diane Adame got from local scholars of Catholicism about the public disagreements between Pope Leo XIV and President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.
James Keenan, a professor of theology at Boston College, said Pope Leo is following tradition: “I think that Pope Leo is really telling us that we have to recognize the impact of policies on people whose voices are not being heard,” he said. “Pope Paul VI spoke at the United Nations and had the famous remark, ‘Never again war.’ We saw in the papacy of Pope Francis enormous outreach about migrants and refugees.”
Mathew Schmalz, a professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, said he believes Trump is misunderstanding the Pope: “[Trump is] simply seeing Pope Leo’s comments through a Western lens, not through an international lens, nor the lens of the Catholic Church, which is very much focused on global Catholic issues and issues from the global South,” Schmalz said. “My personal sense is that many MAGA Catholics are not fans of Pope Leo. … But at the same time, they’re going to have to consider deeply the way in which President Trump and his Secretary of War are treating the Catholic Church within this very important and historically significant time.”
Thomas Groome, a professor of theology at Boston College, said the recent comments are simply a more direct version of what the pope has been saying for some time: “He’s making his point that this war has to stop and all this talking about wiping out cultures and civilizations is abhorrent, illegal in the realm of jurisprudence and public law,” Groome said. “But [it] is also totally contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Dig deeper:
-Trump vows to sink Iranian ships approaching a U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz
-Pope Leo brushes off Trump criticism amid growing Vatican-U.S. tensions over the Iran war
-Pope Leo says 'delusion of omnipotence’ is fueling U.S.-Israeli war in Iran
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