Developmental disability advocates, school representatives, health care leaders, and residents took to a public microphone Tuesday to argue for specific priorities in the New Hampshire budget, in a marathon hearing that highlighted broad concerns with the state’s funding models.
(This story was originally published by New Hampshire Bulletin.)
During a nine-hour virtual listening session that ended around 10:30 p.m., advocates pressed the Senate Finance Committee for additional funding for mental health services, schools, child care programs, and dental care, and argued against efforts to cut those areas. Speakers also asked senators to remove a House restriction on family care funding and a ban on teaching “divisive topics.”
Chion Wolf photo
With many churches, synagogues and mosques closed because of the pandemic, clergy across religious traditions have found new ways to bring people together.
The Rev. Jerry Streets said COVID-19 has called on faith leaders to be creative, “. which for me has meant alternative ways of connecting through weekly Zoom meetings with the congregation, online worship services. And what I’m sensing is a whole new model of ministry being forged as a result of responding to the pandemic.”
Streets is the pastor at Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church in New Haven and former chaplain at Yale University.
“Dixwell is about 110-15 people, the oldest African-American Congregational Church in the known world. And a significant number of our members are mature elderly. And so we’ve found the need to partner them with their grandchildren and younger people who’ve helped them to learn and to use the technology.”