WAMC Northeast Report on WAMC

The recently appointed Massachusetts Secretary of Education visited with school superintendents and local officials in the Berkshires today to hear suggestions for improving the state education system.

County legislatures around New York state have been mulling over the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act - or SAFE act - some taking up resolutions against it.

Many listeners of this radio station awakened recently to the news that the teachers union has gone to court seeking to have New York State’s property tax cap declared unconstitutional.

The property tax cap is, understandably, very popular.  And, as president of New York State United Teachers, I suspect our decision to challenge it will be unpopular.

A county executive in the Hudson Valley is launching an initiative as a response to December’s Newtown, Connecticut mass school shooting. It’s called “Safer Communities”, and it kicks off next week with a symposium on school safety.

Vermont Congressman Peter Welch was at the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation - known as VSAC - this morning to announce new legislation intended to ease and simplify the college financial aid application process.

Advocates for low-income families in Massachusetts are calling on the state and federal governments to increase funding for fuel assistance programs in the shadow of sequestration.

In a few short days, members of Congress must vote to avoid the series of across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, but if not; many programs that benefit the neediest families will have their budgets slashed mid-year.

A long shot bid by the city of Chicopee to get into the casino competition in Massachusetts has failed. But, the city’s mayor says Chicopee does not need casino money to survive

It’s been the best of times, and the worst of times for the University of Miami athletics. On the one hand, the Hurricanes have the number two men’s basketball team in the country, which is quite something for a school that usually sees basketball as simply a bridge between bowl season and spring football.

Vermont  lawmakers are considering dropping the state's traditional maple syrup-labeling system in favor of an international one.

The Vermont Senate has passed and sent to the House a resolution that supports the Agency of Agriculture’s proposal to adopt an administrative rule to implement international maple grading standards. Vermont Maple Sugarmakers’ Board Chair Jacques Couture explains that the international grading system is brand new.

A gun buyback program in western Massachusetts has received a boost from some people who are almost daily witnesses to the problem of gun violence.  

Trauma surgeons, other doctors, and staff at Baystate Medical Center, as well as the hospital itself are helping to fund  the gun buyback program that will be held March 2nd at the Springfield Police Dept Headquarters. Dr. Ronald Gross, the chief of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at the hospital spearheaded the effort that resulted in a contribution of $2,450 to buyback guns.