With meetings by video conferencing no longer demanded by a pandemic, City Manager Louis A. DePasquale ordered city staff on Tuesday to not permit remote public comment if a meeting was otherwise in person – conflicting with council orders without explanation.

Lines in the sand are being drawn in the district’s decision to suspend two teachers without pay for a day for declining to participate in administering the MCAS tests to students. A letter supporting the two educators signed by 189 educators was delivered to superintendent Kenneth Salim’s office.

Parents and other caregivers worried about being unable to find kids a spot in fall after-school programs can take comfort: city councillors are working toward a hearing on the issue before the end of June.

Two Cambridge Public Schools educators out of 52 have been suspended without pay for a day for declining to administer the MCAS tests to elementary school students this spring.

Public meetings this week look at buying land in Alewife, updating green space, keeping options for remote speaking at City Council and School Committee meetings, a boutique hotel proposal and improvements to The Port neighborhood.

A citizen-generated model for a public safety unit apart from the Cambridge Police Department was approved in a Monday vote by the City Council, whose members expressed optimism it could coexist with a second model proposed by a city task force.

Public meetings this week look at, well, what public meetings will look like after the pandemic, a proposal for a new kind of public safety and enacting an acoustic music law; cutting small-business permitting and licensing fees; “missing middle” zoning; and the return of the Cantab Lounge.

Public meetings this week look at how Covid affected high school graduation rates, reforming the city’s Plan E charter, planning for a cohesive Alewife neighborhood, two potential Neighborhood Conservation Districts and a remake of The Garage in Harvard Square.

The broad acceptance of some confrontational views on policing, including by our own force, reflects a fundamental orientation toward violence embedded in everything from procedures to training. As a result, meaningful reform seems unlikely.

The author of an order about Israel and Palestine came in for a drubbing from fellow city councillors seeing it as a “political charade” that traumatized Cantabrigians.