Signaling to undocumented migrants that the state won’t lift a finger to enforce immigration laws is like turning on the flashing neon “vacancy” sign on a motel. Need a room? Come here. 

Originally Published: November 18, 2024 at 12:54 AM EST

A winning Keno ticket worth $40,000 was sold at a 7-Eleven in Brockton on Saturday.

Another winning Keno ticket worth $40,000 was sold at a gas station in Springfield the same day.

• Read more: Mass. State Lottery: $40,000 Keno ticket sold at Springfield gas station

In Keno, players select up to 12 numbers spots to play, and then choose numbers between 1 and 80 to fill each spot. Each number spot offers unique prizes and odds of winning.

Players then choose how much they want to wager on each drawing — between $1 and $20 — and how many drawings they want to use the same numbers for. The same numbers can be played in up to 30 consecutive drawings, and drawings take place every day every three minutes from 5:04 a.m. to 1:01 a.m.

Players can also multiply their prizes up to 10 times by marking the Keno Bonus. Keno Bonus is not available on the 10 spot, 11 spot or 12 spot.

• Read more: Mass. State Lottery winner: $25,000 a year for life prize won at Mobil station

Overall, at least 234 prizes worth $600 or more were won or claimed in Massachusetts on Thursday, including six in Springfield and seven in Boston.

The Massachusetts State Lottery releases a full list of winning tickets every day. The list only includes winning tickets worth more than $600.

So far, the largest lottery prize won in Massachusetts this year was worth $1 million a year for life.

The prize was from the lottery’s “Lifetime Millions” scratch ticket game. The winner claimed their prize through a trust on July 10, and opted to receive a one-time payment of $15.4 million.

BOSTON – Now that Question 2 has passed, removing MCAS as a graduation requirement in Massachusetts schools, are standards for high school graduation in the state practically nonexistent? One civic activist thinks so.

Will Massachusetts backslide without MCAS requirement?

“It is absolutely back to the future,” said Eastern Bank Executive Chairman Bob Rivers. “The only standard we will have left is four years attending, four years of gym and four years of civics.”

Rivers was one of a group of local business executives who joined with Gov. Maura Healey, Secretary of Education Pat Tutwiler and others in opposition to ending the MCAS standard. In an interview with WBZ-TV, he said that as a result of the 59%-41% approval of Question Two, “You’re just not going to know where your kids sit in an individual school in any particular way. There will still be an MCAS that’ll be administered, but it will become increasingly irrelevant because people won’t pay attention to it. They won’t study it. There’s already ways to opt out of it anyway.”

Campaign ads sponsored by the state’s largest teacher union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, offered a vision of graduation standards tailored to individual students by teachers and, presumably, local school districts. But Rivers – and even some Beacon Hill supporters of Question Two – see a need for some form of statewide standards. 

Will there be new statewide education standards?

Rivers noted that one of the driving forces behind the 1993 Education Reform Act that led to the MCAS standard was concern among employers that a high-school diploma offered no reliable guarantee that the graduate had the basic skills needed in the workplace.

“We see it a lot today now, in many ways, where kids just aren’t prepared for work, the workforce, a career or higher education, and this is only going to make it, make it worse,” he said. “Before the 1993 reform law, we were not number one in the nation in public education. We are today by any particular standard [but scores have been slipping in recent years]. A competitive strength of Massachusetts is the power of our workforce. Unfortunately, by elimination of this standard, that’s been significantly damaged.”

Rivers also discussed his objections to a deal worked out between Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and other business leaders that would raise commercial property tax rates in the city above the legal limit temporarily to compensate for an expected drop in revenues due to high office vacancy rates.