A bill in honor of Adrio Romine, a 17-year-old who tragically took his life after an adult on the internet encouraged and advised him to do so, was signed by Governor Doug Ducey on Tuesday.
Shortly after Adrio’s death, his mother, Paolla Jordan, learned the individual gave her son specific instructions on how to end his life — but no law was broken at the time. Paolla pushed legislation to change that, resulting in the development of HB2459.
The Governor signed the bill in the presence of Paolla Jordan and the bill’s sponsor, Representative Jeff Weninger.
“Our hearts are with Paolla, her family and all Arizonans who have suffered the loss of a loved one to suicide,” said Weninger in a press release. “HB2459 penalizes individuals who encourage minors in a vulnerable state, and it will help protect young Arizonans and their families. I was honored to work on this legislation with Paolla and offer support to those facing difficulties with mental health.”
“I hope that no other parent has to go through what our family experienced,” said Paolla. “There are dangerous people out there that can prey on our children on the internet. Today there is a consequence for a predator’s actions. This law will help protect our children today. I was proud to work with Representative Weninger on getting HB2459 Laloboy Act through the finish line, and I am grateful to everyone working to protect children facing suicidal thoughts.”
Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels has taken part in a number of media interviews in recent weeks about the growing influx of illegal border crossers coming in from Mexico, and it is clear who he blames for the uncontrolled public health and public safety situation getting worse by the day.
“The border patrol is no longer securing the border,” Dannels told KFYI’s James T. Harris on Monday. “What they’re doing is taking care of children and adults.”
Dannels told Harris that the White House is using a “very kind choice of words” when discussing the number of people trying to cross the 1,954-mile international border in the last few weeks. Words, the sheriff says, which are “in conflict with what is truly going on at the border.”
And that, the sheriff says, requires calling the situation at the country’s southwest border what it is – a crisis, not “a challenge” as a spokesperson for President Joe Biden recently called it.
According to Dannels, recent reports place the number of people trying to cross the southern border at 2,500 to 4,000 per day, with 400 to 500 of them being children. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects those numbers to hold steady for several weeks before it spikes as more migrants from South America make it through Central America and Mexico.
Dannels told Harris that he has seen no logistical support nor mitigation efforts coming out of Washington D.C., which he believes should concern all Americans, not just those in border states.
“When you fail to recognize a problem and you avoid it or ignore it, it only gets worse,” he said. “What happens on the southwest border doesn’t stay here, it migrates throughout the United States into communities throughout.”
Cochise County’s southern boundary shares more than 80 miles of the international border. Dannels has installed hundreds of surveillance cameras focused on the border and other remote areas of the county to supplement those in use by DHS agencies such as Customs & Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol.
Earlier this month Dannels was interviewed live on Fox & Friends about Biden’s order in January which halted border wall construction, including one section of old fence the sheriff said was recently seeing “five or six groups” coming through every day.
The sheriff noted he and other sheriffs along the border were not briefed in advance about Biden’s wall construction order. There has also been a deafening silence about the border crisis from Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, as well as national public health officials.
“Nobody is talking about what’s going on at the southwest border when it comes to the health pandemic in this country,” Dannels said during a March 5 interview on Fox & Friends. “And then you look at the public safety aspect of this, it’s upsetting.”
It is the same message Dannels shared a few days earlier in an interview with Fox News’ Your World program and then again March 8 on Fox’s American’s Newsroom show.
“Talking to my federal partners, talking to local law enforcement, talking to our health department – I mean when it comes to public safety, national security, when it comes to the health pandemic, we’re in trouble –we’re in serious trouble and this all started under the word politics,” he said March 8.
“When this administration failed to engage with my governor, my attorney general, our health departments, our emergency services coordinator- along with other border states and beyond- that’s when it started. So we’re trying to pick up the pieces right now.”
AZ Free News has confirmed Dannels is being suggested as a possible Republican candidate in 2022 when Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick’s seat in Congress comes open. Dannels said Monday he has been approached about running for various political offices, but he has not considered such a move as his current term runs through 2024.
Continuous learning, hybrid learning, and blended learning are terms utilized in defining teachers’ return to school by March 15. Online learning occurred between the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and this period where teachers are required to return to school, to their designated classrooms. However, students are granted the option to participate in remote learning.
The opinions regarding the return to classrooms proposals vary, with some vehemently opposing it. For instance, teachers disagree with each other, citing the overplaying their hand in letting students suffer through distance learning. There are also lingering questions concerning teachers’ silence over time, with reasons such as a fear of retaliation and isolation being cited. Teachers point to the fear of their contracts not being renewed and the subsequent “blow back” from not engaging in group think. In my opinion, this is quite unbelievable because this is a free world. Teachers should be heard, and after this, a return-to-work framework that favors them should be put in place.
Those supporting returning to classrooms, especially parents, argue that the right to accessing proper education was violated through remote education. Furthermore, individual learning strategies were not adequately addressed, resulting in the plans becoming ineffective over time. This resulted in substantial learning disparities between students. My opinion, based on the above, is that the option of remote learning should not be granted to students since the learning plans may not work.
In conclusion, I concur that teaching is a calling. Therefore, the debate concerning returning to classrooms should involve heavy consultation with teachers to formulate an appropriate return-to-work strategy. This will require cooperation from teachers and parents, and will be vital through the start of the healing process. However, I oppose the idea that those viewing the task as hard should quit their jobs because we need everyone’s input for an adequate return to class strategy. Therefore, instead of them quitting, they should offer ideas to facilitate learning in a post-Covid world.
Catherine Barrett is an Arizona Governor’s Master Teacher and currently Chair of citizens initiative petition, A Classroom Code of Ethics For Public Schools K-12. You can find her on Twitter @ReadersLeadPD, and on Facebook at Yes4Ethics
A bill introduced by nearly one dozen legislators to require public bodies to provide the public with more information before discussing public matters in private under the guise of seeking “legal advice” is being strongly opposed by the very public officials who can currently conduct many discussions in secret.
Rep. Beverly Pingerelli (R-LD21) and 10 co-sponsors of HB2804 want to amend two statutes related to public meetings, executive sessions, and legal advice. Their bill passed the House last week and is now assigned to two Senate committees where its attempt to ensure more transparency in public meetings has garnered resistance from nearly every city and town, several elected school superintendents, and the County Supervisors Association of Arizona.
A public body is allowed by law to hold an executive session for the discussion, consideration, or consultation of only nine types of matters. One is to obtain “legal advice with the attorney or attorneys of the public body.”
Some officials claim they need flexibility at any time during a public meeting to move into a non-public executive session to obtain legal advice on any item on the agenda. That is why many public bodies utilize a generic disclaimer on every meeting agenda advising that the members may convene an executive session during the meeting with no further notice.
However, many citizens and public-transparency watchdogs have complained in recent years that public bodies are misusing the legal advice clause to privately discuss a variety of issues which could -and should- be discussed in public.
And that is where HB2804 comes in. The first thing it does is limit the situations in which legal advice can be used as reason for an executive session to the other eight subject matters permitted to be discussed in an executive session.
The bill would also require meeting agendas that include specific notice of any executive session under the legal advice clause to note which of the eight subject matters apply to the agenda item.
Such changes are long overdue, according to Diane Douglas, who served as Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction from 2015 to 2018.
“The legal advice clause of the Executive Sessions statute -or the ‘get out of jail free’ clause as I call it- undermines the intent of Open Meeting Law,” Douglas told Arizona Daily Independent. “It should only be used very sparingly and only when a public discussion will compromise a negotiation, settlement, or an employee’s legally protected privacy.”
But Douglas says various public boards, commissions, committees, districts, as well as cities, towns, and counties currently end up discussing matters of public interest behind closed doors by “dragging an attorney in” even if the matters would otherwise be required to be discussed in public.
“Often times legal advice or discussion, that will not otherwise compromise a decision of the board, is of equal interest to the public being served,” Douglas said.
Douglas also notes there is already a simple solution for situations where an issue comes up during a meeting that requires legal advice, but an executive session has not been properly notice.
“Table the discussion and bring it back when proper executive session notice has been made,” she said.
The other eight types of subjects a public body is allowed to hold an executive session for include discussion, consideration, or consultation on matters of employment, assignment, or appointment; records exempt by law from public inspection; litigation and settlement discussions; contracts subject to negotiations; negotiations with employee organizations; international, interstate, city, town, tribal council or Indian reservation negotiations; school safety matters; and negotiations on the purchase, sale or lease of real property.
HB2804 would also require that any public body meetings related to the “goals and objectives” by which an officer, appointee, or employee of the public body will be evaluated “must be conducted in a public meeting.” However, any actual discussion or consideration about the person’s employment, assignment, or appointment would be done in private unless the person requests a public discussion.
By Kathleen Winn, Maricopa Community College District Governing Board Member |
Arizona’s largest college system is experiencing the effects of Covid. Since last March when the college shut its doors to on campus learning and cancelled all athletic programs the enrollment numbers have significantly changed. Across the district enrollment is down almost 20%. This taxpayer enterprise continues to remain on-line and as we have learned this is not conducive for students who attend community college. At the same time GCU and ASU are getting the benefit as their enrollments are up by 7 to 10 percent.
Ironically, the college campus has allowed thousands of community members on campus to be tested for Covid and now to be vaccinated. One board member had suggested “we let people know they could benefit from taking classes” as they had a captive audience waiting in line. They were told this would be in poor taste. So, the numbers continue to decline.
The Interim Chancellor has made many personal changes and has many interim positions serving as college Presidents. After Maria Harper-Marinick was forced out, Leslie Cooper, and the recent resignations of Provost Karla Fisher and Dr. Larry Johnson from Phoenix College, one might question what all the volatility is about.
Many classes require hands on experience that cannot be accomplished virtually. The choice to stay closed has been a costly one for the district and may cost some their jobs. There have been no layoffs like University of Arizona or ASU. Unbelievably the board gave a COLA raise recently. If it were not for mismanagement, there would be no management at all. As college Presidents make hard decisions, the leadership has not committed to reopening the college.
This week the community college is asking to expand some of their programs to 4 years, a bill that was designed to help the rural colleges (HB2523). If Maricopa cannot serve the community by training a much-needed workforce, does adding more expensive 4-year programs make sense? Until this college is fully operational and can demonstrate stable leadership and better enrollment numbers we may want to wait before asking taxpayers for more money. But while they remain closed you can get a COVID vaccine and that is the only way you can get on a Maricopa Community College campus.
Ms. Winn has extensive experience in public service, devoting much her time to combating a variety of causes including senior abuse, human trafficking, crime, homelessness and substance abuse.
Catherine Barrett is an Arizona Governor’s Master Teacher and currently Chair of citizens initiative petition, A Classroom Code of Ethics For Public Schools K-12. You can find her on Twitter @ReadersLeadPD, and on Facebook at Yes4Ethics
Ms. Winn has extensive experience in public service, devoting much her time to combating a variety of causes including senior abuse, human trafficking, crime, homelessness and substance abuse.