The Arizona attorney general’s office found that Litchfield Elementary School District (LESD) violated open meeting law through its Diversity Empowerment Team (DET). In some reporting, social media posts, and even LESD communications and internal documents, the DET was referred to as the “Diversity Empowerment Committee,” or “DEC.”
Deputy Solicitor General Michael Catlett wrote the letter notifying LESD of their violations. For violating open meeting law with the DET, Catlett determined that there wouldn’t be any repercussions, but it would serve to inform the attorney general’s response to any further open meetings violations. LESD was also found in violation of open meeting law for allowing and defending the behavior of one board member, Kimberly Moran, when she interrupted public commentary critical of LESD’s equity statement with a sign that read, “Not True.” Catlett informed LESD that Moran would be required to undergo further training for this violation.
Catlett said that the DET qualifies as a public body, despite insistence from LESD that it didn’t. Information about the DET wasn’t made publicly available through LESD.
“Few government responsibilities are more important than the education of children and the issue of how to education children about discrimination and race is important and complex,” wrote Catlett. “Parents and other community members should be given significant opportunity for input on school curriculum or policies that have any possibility of being viewed as ‘characteriz[ing] the United States as irredeemably racist or founded on principles of racism (as opposed to principles of equality) or that purport to ascribe character traits, values, privileges, status, or beliefs, or that assign fault, blame, or bias, to a particular race or to an individual because of his or her race.’”
LESD’s equity statement was also a product of the DET. In addition to a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, the equity statement announced that LESD pledged to antiracism.
Parents and community members also weren’t privy to DET members’ identities. In fact, the team wasn’t mentioned on LESD’s website at all. However, some parents did manage to learn the identities of DET members.
AZ Free News learned that DET members were parents Latrice Gettings, Tamillia Valuenzela, Kamaria McDonald; Palm Valley Elementary School special education teacher Brittany Austin; curriculum administrative assistant Eva Aguila; Verrado Heritage Elementary School behavior coach Grizellie Hedges; Litchfield Elementary School behavior coach Heather Maxwell; Mabel Padgett teacher Anthony Munoz; student transporter Jocelyn Zvosechz; Palm Valley Elementary School principal Jen Benjamin; Wigwam Creek Middle School assistant principal Kacie McQuarrie; Verrado Heritage Elementary School principal Meredith Noce; and LESD Title One director John Scudder.
Only one LESD governing board member was on the DET: Moran.
The parents chosen for DET have publicly shown their support for nearly all social justice beliefs, including: critical race theory, Black Lives Matter (BLM), anti-racism, transgenderism, LGBTQ+ lifestyles, ICE abolishment, and DACA continuance.
It also appears through a public post by McDonald that DET has a private Facebook page.
In addition to the DET issue, the attorney general’s office addressed the behavior of Moran at length. During LESD’s April 13 board meeting, Moran disrupted public comments criticizing the board’s equity statement by holding up a sign that read, “Not True[.]”
LESD defended Moran’s behavior, arguing that open meeting law allows board members to respond to public commentary. The attorney general’s office disagreed. They stated that the full text of the law allows board members to respond at the end of public commentary, not during. Catlett wrote that Moran’s behavior was “extremely concerning,” considering she’d just undergone open meeting law training.
“Ms. Moran’s actions violating the Open Meeting Law immediately following Open Meeting Law training are extremely concerning,” wrote Catlett. “Thus, the Office will require that Ms. Moran re-take the training received by the board during the April 13 meeting.”
The DET also had an Outside Facilitator named Amber Checky, the CEO and Founder of Inclusion Counts – a diversity training and consultation business.
Checky and the other DET members earned the ire of parents over the summer for their involvement in DET’s plans for increasing equity at LESD. These plans were published by Young America’s Foundation (YAF). The “Litchfield Elementary School District Transformational Equity Work” explained that the DEC (DET) created the following equity goals:
· Reduce disproportionality in discipline for Black students;
· Reduce disproportionality in achievement for Black and Hispanic students;
· Increase professional development for LESD staff on diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism;
· Develop a diverse and inclusive curriculum by:
· Auditing existing curriculum materials for bias to ensure multicultural perspectives;
· Ensuring teachers have cultural competence: clarity, knowledge, and agency to adapt, modify, or enhance curriculum to bring cultural awareness and diverse voices and perspectives into curriculum;
· Recruit and retain culturally competent and diverse administrators, faculty, and staff (diversity refers to race, ethnicity, gender identity, faith, ability, sexual orientation, appearance, socioeconomic class, age, and life experience).
According to the internal document, these DEC (DET) goals were the primary focus of the 2021-22 school year.
Parents objected to Checky as an outside consultant – partly because of her beliefs, and partly because they didn’t get a say in the makeup of DET. Checky and her wife, Inclusion Counts CFO and Co-Founder Heather Checky, raise their daughter as a son. This is public knowledge: Checky’s foster daughter is widely publicized. The Checkys interviewed with several news outlets in 2019 about their daughter, claiming a summer camp refused her entry because of her transgenderism.
LESD Superintendent Jodi Gunning rebuked parents for taking issue with Checky and the DET. Gunning offered a veiled threat that law enforcement would intervene if parents continued to identify and criticize members of the DET.
“It has come to my attention that the names of our staff members and volunteers who served on the Diversity Empowerment Committee (DET), as well as screen shots from their personal Facebook pages, have been posted to social media as individuals to ‘get to know.’ This even included personal information about someone’s partner and child,” wrote Gunning. “Litchfield Elementary School District denounces any attempts to intimidate or threaten. We strongly oppose personal attacks and fear tactics by anyone attempting to persuade the professional business of our public institution. We are working closely with law enforcement partners to ensure the safety of all of our stakeholders.”
The family that Gunning referenced was the Checkys.
As of press time, LESD hasn’t updated its website with public information about the DET.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
In Scottsdale – and communities like ours all over the country – rising prescription drug prices are causing tremendous financial hardship.
It’s impacting patients struggling to afford health care. It’s affecting small business owners who would like to provide affordable health care for their employees. It’s impacting families faced with the unbearable choice between paying for critical medications and other basic necessities. All the while Big Pharma continues to see profits increase.
This January drug companies increased prices on more than 800 brand name drugs rise and already in July we are seeing another batch of price hikes under way, surpassing 65 increases in just a few weeks.
While price hikes disproportionately affect senior citizens and individuals with chronic conditions, more than two-thirds of all American adults use prescription drugs. This is an issue that affects us all.
So, it’s time for our legislators in Washington to pass solutions with bipartisan support.
It’s time to advance market-based reforms with support from Republicans and Democrats to increase competition and transparency, stop taxpayer subsidies for price hikes higher than inflation, cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors, and hold Big Pharma accountable by giving the drug industry responsibility for significant Medicare Part D cost-sharing.
As a former US Air Force Captain, I know what it means to be a leader and step up when faced with adversity. It’s time for Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema to step up too and deliver solutions to lower drug prices and hold Big Pharma accountable.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office announced that it has signed on to a tentative historic $26 billion multistate settlement with four pharmaceutical companies for their roles in the opioid crisis. The tentative agreement includes Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen – the nation’s three major pharmaceutical distributors – and Johnson & Johnson, which manufactured and marketed opioids.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, final details, including a critical mass of states and political subdivisions nationally, are necessary to finalize the settlement. If finalized, Arizona would receive up to $549 million from the settlement and the money would be used for opioid treatment, prevention, and education.
If the settlement is finalized, Arizona’s funds will be distributed through the Arizona Opioid Settlement Memorandum of Understanding (One Arizona Plan). In October 2020, the AGO and local governments (90 cities and towns and all 15 counties) signed on to the One Arizona Plan to maximize Arizona’s amount of recovery from opioid settlements. The One Arizona Plan also ensures that funds will be expeditiously distributed across Arizona. Read more on the One Arizona Plan here .
Funding Overview:
Nationally, the three distributors (Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen) collectively will pay up to $21 billion over 18 years.
Nationally, Johnson & Johnson will pay up to $5 billion over nine years with up to $3.7 billion paid during the first three years.
The total funding distributed will be determined by the overall degree of participation by both litigating and non-litigating state and local governments.
After attorneys’ fees and costs, the money is to be spent on opioid treatment and prevention.
Arizona’s share of the national funding has been determined by an agreement among the states using a formula that takes into account the impact of the crisis on the state and the population of the state.
Injunctive Relief Overview:
The 10-year agreement will result in court orders requiring Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen to:
Establish a centralized independent clearinghouse to provide all three distributors and state regulators with aggregated data and analytics about where drugs are going and how often, eliminating blind spots in the current systems used by distributors.
Use data-driven systems to detect suspicious opioid orders from customer pharmacies.
Terminate customer pharmacies’ ability to receive shipments, and report those companies to state regulators, when they show certain signs of diversion.
Prohibit shipping of and report suspicious opioid orders.
Prohibit sales staff from influencing decisions related to identifying suspicious opioid orders.
Require senior corporate officials to engage in regular oversight of anti-diversion efforts.
The 10-year agreement will result in court orders requiring Johnson & Johnson to:
Stop selling opioids.
Not fund or provide grants to third parties for promoting opioids.
Not lobby on activities related to opioids.
Share clinical trial data under the Yale University Open Data Access Project.
In order for the multistate settlement to be finalized, a critical mass of participating states and local governments will need to sign on.
The settlement comes as a result of investigations by state attorneys general into whether the three distributors fulfilled their legal duty to refuse to ship opioids to pharmacies that submitted suspicious drug orders and whether Johnson & Johnson misled patients and doctors about the addictive nature of opioid drugs. The settlement would resolve claims of both states and local governments across the country, including the nearly 4,000 that have filed lawsuits in federal and state courts.
Tragically, last year, drug overdose deaths rose to a record 93,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Arizona saw a 30 percent increase in overdose deaths over the prior year, claiming more than 2,600 lives in 2020. Countless more have seen their lives torn apart by the disease of addiction. The damage, which continues in part every day due to an insecure southern border, also impacts their families, friends and communities.
The FDA approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, now marketed as COMIRNATY, doesn’t mean it’s safe or effective, according to Dr. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). Orient made these statements on the radio show, The Conservative Circus.
Orient asserted that this FDA approval was rushed. Due to the hastened timeline of the COVID-19 vaccine’s approval, Orient speculated that the FDA may be corrupt.
“What the FDA did was to rush this through without public hearings, without an investigation of the more than 12,000 deaths that have occurred within a couple of weeks of getting the vaccine, or the many thousands of cases of permanent disability,” said Orient. “That doesn’t mean the vaccine is safe – it may just mean the FDA is corrupt.”
In her interview with Conservative Circus, Orient also asserted that the Department of Justice (DOJ) opinion that emergency-use authorization treatments could be mandated wasn’t consistent with law.
Orient warned that the FDA itself admits that they can’t confirm the long-term effects of the vaccine.
“There are many authorities that say they would not give this vaccine to young people period because they have no way of knowing what the long-term effects are,” said Orient. “If you read the package insert that the FDA just released, it says that they are not able to say that the vaccine has been tested for effects on fertility, cancer, autoimmune diseases, or other things. These things take time to manifest, and there has not been time and the surveillance system is very, very poor.”
Included in the package insert is another warning for cases of myocarditis and pericarditis – heart inflammation that can be fatal – particularly within 7 days of the second dose. The clinical studies note that many recipients aged 16 to 55 reported adverse reactions mirroring flu-like symptoms: fatigue (70 percent), headache (65 percent), muscle pain (45 percent), chills (41 percent), joint pain (27 percent), and fever (18 percent). Recipients aged 56 and older reported less adverse reactions.
Orient pointed out that the government pulled the swine flu vaccine after a number of Guillain-Barre cases were reported (estimated at one in 100,000) which were linked to 53 deaths. She said that she doesn’t believe the COVID-19 vaccine is absolutely necessary for anyone.
The FDA and CDC have warned against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Orient said that this was “terrible advice,” along with their insistence that hydroxychloroquine shouldn’t be used to treat COVID. She said that hundreds of doctors and thousands of patients have used these drugs effectively to treat COVID.
“The safety is known for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. The safety is known for those two drugs,” insisted Orient.
Orient has testified before the Senate on the efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine.
Pfizer’s brand name for their vaccine, COMIRNATY, mashes up the words “community,” “immunity,” “mRNA,” and “COVID.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com
Last week, the Secretary of State’s office received the “Arizonans for Voter ID Act:” a ballot initiative to strengthen ID requirements for in-person and mail-in voting through universal voter ID. The initiative will require ID for mail-in ballots, but will also provide a free voter ID to those registered voters who need it. Voters would also be required to give certain information: their date of birth, as well as either the last four digits of their Social Security Number, driver’s license number, or nonoperating state identification number.
Proponents of the Arizonans for Voter ID Act assert that its voter ID requirement will also deter ballot harvesting. The political committee that filed the ballot initiative, Arizonans for Voter ID, was joined in their efforts by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Heritage Action, Honest Elections Project Action, Foundation for Government Accountability, the Goldwater Institute, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Arizona, AMAC Action, and Arizona Women of Action.
As required by law to qualify for the 2022 November ballot, the Arizonans for Voter ID Act acquired at least 237,645 signatures by July 7.
Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi asserted that most Arizonans and all other American citizens support strong voter ID.
“This initiative will ensure that no matter when you vote, where you vote, or how you vote, identification will be required,” said Mussi.
The polls support this claim. Over 60 percent of Arizona voters support voter ID. Nationally, around 80 percent of Americans support voter ID.
In July, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ruled that Arizona law makes it “quite easy” for individuals to vote. The court case, Brnovich, et al. v. Democratic National Committee, et al., outlined the provisions of Arizona voting law that ease the burden for voters. Alito noted that this included in-person voting on Election Day, 27 days of early in-person voting, and only one application required for mail-in voting which could be extended perpetually through the Active Early Voting List as long as voters vote once within two straight two-year election cycles (rebranded from “Permanent Early Voting List,” or PEVL, through legislation passed earlier this year limiting the system’s perpetuity).
ID plays a role in many mainstream societal transactions, as Arizonans for Voter ID Committee Chair Vicki Vaughn argued.
“Arizonans show identification all the time in their daily lives to purchase alcohol, receive unemployment benefits, make major transactions, and board a plane, among others,” stated Vaughn. “Requiring identification before casting a ballot is necessary for our elections.”
A photo ID or another valid, government-issued ID is also required for the following: obtaining a driver’s license, receiving certain in-patient or out-patient doctor or hospital treatments, receiving certain over-the-counter or prescription medicines, buying guns or ammunition, visiting schools or jails, filing court documents, adopting a child, engaging in parole or probation, receiving auto insurance, donating blood, cashing or paying with checks, pawning items, responding to a traffic stop, obtaining a passport, picking up packages at the post office, buying cigarettes, opening a bank account, renting or buying a house, applying for a mortgage, adopting a pet, renting a hotel room, applying for a hunting or fishing license, establishing a utilities account, and applying for a job.
Learn more about the Arizonans for Voter ID Act here.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
