Boston Globe, December 2022
Marilyn Rabinovitz was running late. Again. It was an early morning in November, and Rabinovitz had left her home in Stoughton with plenty of time to get her 7:25 train. There were no school buses today to slow her down, so she pulled into the Canton Junction commuter rail stop, climbed to the platform, and held her breath. Then she waited. And waited. At 7:37, she called work. “The train still isn’t here,” she sighed. “And I don’t know when it’s going to get here.”
Rabinovitz runs a Head Start day care in Roxbury, near the Ruggles MBTA station. Running late means she’s not there when parents arrive. It means her early shift employee—the one she hired to be there in case she’s late—has to check in the children alone. That means parents end up crowding into the lobby, anxiously watching the clock. Many work jobs with hourly wages, so if they miss the T and are late to work, their pay can be docked. “When you work in team of people,” Rabinovitz said, one late train ”becomes the push on the first domino.”
