DEVIN ALEXANDER, 26, is the type of entrepreneur state regulators have said they hope will be able to get into the state’s new marijuana home delivery industry. A black man […]
Shira Schoenberg
Shira Schoenberg is a reporter at CommonWealth magazine. Shira previously worked for more than seven years at the Springfield Republican/MassLive.com where she covered state politics and elections, covering topics as diverse as the launch of the legal marijuana industry, problems with the state's foster care system and the elections of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Gov. Charlie Baker. Shira won the Massachusetts Bar Association's 2018 award for Excellence in Legal Journalism and has had several stories win awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association. Shira covered the 2012 New Hampshire presidential primary for the Boston Globe. Before that, she worked for the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, where she wrote about state government, City Hall and Barack Obama's 2008 New Hampshire primary campaign. Shira holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
Posted inHealth Care
Massachusetts hospitals bleeding money
EVEN AS MASSACHUSETTS hospitals were coping with an influx of COVID-19 patients this spring, they were losing massive amounts of money. While some hospitals got large sums of federal relief […]
Posted inEducation
Ed Commissioner Jeff Riley pushes in-person learning
MASSACHUSETTS EDUCATION Commissioner Jeffrey Riley is strongly urging local schools to open in person this fall, pushing back against state teachers’ unions who are calling for the school year to […]
Posted inEducation
‘Breakfast after the bell’ signed into law
WITHIN THE NEXT two years, it will become much easier for an estimated 150,000 low-income children in Massachusetts to eat breakfast in school. Gov. Charlie Baker on Tuesday signed a […]
Posted inUncategorized
What will happen to 620,000 quarantined marijuana vapes?
WHAT DOES ONE do with 620,000 quarantined marijuana vapes? The answer, according to the state Cannabis Control Commission, is retest and resell them; use the material in another product; or destroy them. That […]
Posted inUncategorized
Long list of unfinished business for Legislature
THE TRADITIONAL END-OF-SESSION legislative crush got a little less intense this year as both branches agreed to extendformal sessions past July 31 due to the coronavirus outbreak. The extended session […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Tsarnaev death sentence vacated
A US APPEALS COURT on Friday vacated the death sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the latest chapter in a years-long legal saga resulting from a horrific crime that […]
Posted inEducation
State school aid level-funded
IT WAS SUPPOSED to be the first year of a new school funding formula that was going to vastly increase public school spending. Instead, amid a global pandemic, the state […]
Posted inPolitics
Senate agrees to extend legislative session
THE MASSACHUSETTS SENATE on Thursday officially voted to extend the legislative session. In a unanimous vote on the Senate floor, senators went along with a decision made by the House […]
Posted inRace/Racism
Black staffers urge Beacon Hill to look inward
THE MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE has touted the importance of racial equity as lawmakers passed bills related to police reform, maternal health disparities, demographic reporting on COVID-19, and commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr.’s […]
Posted inHealth Care
Congressional hearing explores oversight of soldiers’ homes
AT A CONGRESSIONAL HEARING on Wednesday, the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home was held up as a model – a model of what can go wrong when an odd state-federal relationship leaves […]
Posted inUncategorized
House extends formal sessions past July 31
THE MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE on Wednesday voted to take the highly unusual step of extending formal sessions past July 31 to give lawmakers more time to complete their work in light […]
Posted inHealth Care
Step therapy bill on the move
WHEN SHE WAS 11, Anna Legassie was diagnosed with a rare type of juvenile arthritis. In the 26 years since, there have been 17 times that an insurance company tried […]
Posted inState House News Service, Uncategorized
Lawmakers keep options open for this fall
LAWMAKERS ON TUESDAY released a three-month interim budget to keep the state running through October, and acknowledged that they will have to take the highly unusual step of returning to […]
Posted inPolitics
Equity concerns imperil Baker housing bill
THE RACIAL RECKONING that is overtaking Massachusetts may have one surprising casualty: Gov. Charlie Baker’s housing bill. After two and a half years, Baker’s “Housing Choices” bill is emerging for […]
Posted inPolitics
Anti-Trump ‘Gen Z’ Republicans look for a home
WHEN MIKE BRODO chaired the Massachusetts Teenage Republicans in 2017-2018, he was getting increasingly frustrated by the “Trumpism” dominating the national party. But Brodo said he looked to the more […]
Posted inEconomy
House releases sports betting bill
CONSIDER ITS UNCERTAIN ODDS as falling somewhere between a Hail Mary pass and a slam dunk. With a week left before the scheduled end of the legislative session, the Massachusetts House […]
Posted inHealth Care
Telehealth is burgeoning, but how to pay for it?
SINCE THE CORONAVIRUS pandemic hit, going to a doctor’s appointment for many people has looked similar to going to work or visiting a parent: Go to a computer, log onto a […]
Posted inEducation
Worcester officials fed up with Charter/Spectrum
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN internet service is a barrier to remote learning? And what happens when resolving the internet access problem is in the hands of a private company, which holds a […]
Posted inHealth Care
Ex-Holyoke Soldiers’ Home superintendent disputes independent report
AN ATTORNEY REPRESENTING ousted Holyoke Soldiers’ Home superintendent Bennett Walsh on Thursday disputed many of the central claims in an independent investigation that looked at what caused a massive coronavirus […]
Posted inEducation
Private schools, charters moved forward with remote curriculum
WHEN THIRD-GRADER Alisa Paley’s public elementary school in Canton closed for COVID-19, the school gave students laptops and her teacher held optional daily 40-minute Zoom meetings. A month in, the […]
Posted inHealth Care
Children slower than adults to resume medical care
NEW DATA RELEASED Wednesday by the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission show that while adults are returning to the doctor at near pre-pandemic levels, children are not. The national data show that doctors’ visits for adults […]
Posted inEducation
Fear and trepidation as teachers contemplate returning to class
WHEN NEWTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS closed in March, seventh grade English teacher Jenna Monahan assumed school would resume safely one day and she would return. Now, as she thinks about going back to […]
Posted inUncategorized
Cannabis Control Commission: Regulators, activists, or both?
AT A RECENT VIRTUAL RALLY highlighting the need for more opportunities for black, Latino and other minority groups in the cannabis industry, two of the speakers were members of the […]