A pedestrian was killed after being hit by a car in Boston early Wednesday morning, according to authorities.
The crash occurred just after 4:30 a.m. at Hampden Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard, Boston police said, causing the area to shut down.
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Rain, strong winds Wednesday followed by big temperature drop
After a record-warm afternoon Tuesday in central Massachusetts, Wednesday will be a wet one. On-and-off rain, heavy at times, will persist throughout the day.
While a break in the rain is possible from late morning to early afternoon, another round…
Embattled Brockton superintendent unretires, is put on leave at fiery school committee meeting
At a wild meeting Tuesday night to discuss high school violence in Brockton, Massachusetts, chaos in the district’s leadership was on full display.
Superintendent Michael Thomas went out on medical leave a short time before last summer’s announcement of a $14 million budget shortfall at Brockton Public Schools. According to NBC affiliate WJAR, he had planned to retire next month.
At Tuesday’s emergency school committee meeting, as community members discussed what’s next for Brockton High School after Gov. Maura Healey quashed a proposal to bring in the National Guard to curb student violence, Thomas said he was rescinding his retirement notice.
“If Mike Thomas was here, this stuff at the high school, you know, would not be happening,” Thomas said.
The Brockton School Committee did not accept Thomas’ move to return, voting at the same meeting to place him on paid administrative leave.
Mayor Robert Sullivan announced on Aug. 31, 2023, that Brockton Public Schools’ budget was short $14 million for the fiscal year.
In an interview with NBC10 Boston days after the deficit came to light, Thomas said it was “Nothing criminal, nothing inappropriate.”
“It’s just, you know, things go quickly in a school district,” he said in September. “Staffing. Extra staff. We had safety and security concerns. We had transportation costs for a lot of different reasons. So there’s a lot of different things that went into it.”
At one point Tuesday, Sullivan shouted that he didn’t have prior knowledge of the shortfall.
“I was not made aware of a Fiscal ’23 deficit until the date of Aug. 8, and that’s a fact,” the mayor yelled.
Like Healey, Sullivan objected to the idea of a National Guard presence at Brockton High School, proposed by four school committee members.
“I do oppose it, I don’t think it’s the right endeavor, but what I didn’t oppose is sending it to the governor,” he said Monday. “Out of respect for the elected officials, just like I am, I sent it up there.”
Parents, teachers and other community members shared their thoughts on making the school safe at Tuesday’s meeting.
“In looking at the school safety issues, I found the school district’s most current security plan is approximately 10 years old,” Brockton Police Chief Brenda Perez said.
She highlighted ways to bolster security, including tightening classroom security, controlling access to the school and training personnel.
Some teachers say that’s not enough.
“This is the first year I’ve ever thought that I could be hurt,” said math teacher Julie Fairfield. “You have that few who are really bad, and they’re so bad.”
New immigration court in Chelmsford aims to ease Mass. case backlog
A new federal immigration court will soon open in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Migrants are continuing to arrive each day, with most awaiting court dates for judges to hear their cases.
As the situation continues to burden the court system, the U.S. Department of Justice plans to open the new Lowell Immigration Court on Chelmsford’s Apollo Drive.
“I hope it provides immediate relief to many, many families who are waiting in this backlog,” said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director of the immigrants’ rights and human trafficking program at the Boston University School of Law.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, says the new facility is opening up in an effort to help combat Massachusetts’ immigration court backlog, currently the seventh-largest in the nation.
But Sherman-Stokes says this is the wrong response.
“We don’t have to continue building jails. We don’t have to continue building courts,” she said. “We could make different decisions on the front end about who we arrest at the border, who we place in deportation proceedings.”
The Executive Office for Immigration Review says its highest priority is reducing the backlog. It says it is encouraging the use of pre-hearing conferences to resolve matters that don’t require valuable court docket time, as well as allowing lawyers to assist noncitizens with proceedings without requiring them to commit to full cases.
The court is expected to open in early April.
More on Massachusetts’ migrant crisis
Pedestrian hit by vehicle in Roslindale
A pedestrian was hospitalized after being hit by a vehicle Tuesday in Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood.
The crash happened around 6:45 p.m. on Washington Street, Boston police said. Aerial footage showed the major thoroughfare blocked off nea…
Boston doctors discuss ‘devastating problem’ of health inequity
Racial disparities continue to plague Massachusetts’ health care system, but thankfully, there’s a lot of work underway to change that.
“The pandemic is probably what changed and brought a lot of these issues that we’ve been dealing with to the forefront of people’s mind,” Boston Medical Center Dr. Sabrina Assoumou said.
One silver lining that came from the COVID-19 pandemic is the lessons that can be used to address conditions that disproportionately impact people of color, like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, maternal health and cancer, Boston-based physicians of color told NBC10 Boston Tuesday.
There’s no silver bullet to addressing these disparities, they said, but there is a lot of work underway to start.
“We know — we’ve known for a long time — that Black individuals are much more likely to die in the context of pregnancy,” Mass General Brigham Associate Chief Health Equity Officer Dr. Allison Bryant Mantha said.
The rate of severe maternal morbidity nearly doubled from 2011 to 2020, with complications highest among Black people, according to Department of Public Health data.
“People are realizing that this is really, truly a very devastating problem,” Assoumou said.
Both Boston Medical Center and Mass General Brigham have programs to address these disparities, including pairing people with doulas and remotely monitoring blood pressure. But experts say programs like these are just a couple of pieces to the puzzle.
“I think it’s important to think about where those inequities might come from,” Bryant Mantha said. “And so I think that we have to say the words ‘structural and systemic racism.’”
“What is the root cause of what we are seeing? Wealth,” Assoumou said. “I think that actually addressing wealth and how is it that we invest and help people increase their financial situation is actually an important piece of the puzzle.”
