by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 29, 2023 | Education, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Arizona’s Education Department is attempting to engage the state’s children in a greater awareness and appreciation of American citizenship.
Earlier this month, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne revealed that the Arizona Department of Education would be conducting a “drawing, painting, and poster contest celebrating Citizenship.”
In a statement accompanying the news release, Horne said, “I am a strong proponent of the Six Pillars of Character which are, Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship. I am very pleased to announce this contest promoting Citizenship, which emphasizes volunteering, cooperation, being informed and voting, knowing and obeying laws, choosing to protect the safety and rights of others and doing your share to make your home and community better.”
According to the Department, there will be two tiers to the contest: K-8 students “who can create a drawing, painting or poster that conveys the trait of Citizenship,” and high school students who “create a poster that supports character values on social media using the good Citizenship pillar.” The contest is open to all Arizona K-12 students in district, charter, private, and home schools, and the deadline to turn in submissions is at the end of the year, December 31.
The Department also offers a Character Education Matching Grant, which is made available to “any public or charter school that teaches a character education curriculum pursuant to section 15-719.” Programs are expected to include a minimum of six of the following ‘character’ attributes: attentiveness, caring, citizenship, compassion, diligence, discernment, fairness, forgiveness, generosity, gratefulness, initiative, integrity, obedience, orderliness, respect, responsibility, sincerity, trustworthiness, virtue, and wisdom.
The Republican schools chief is a strong advocate for Arizona’s emphasis on character education training in schools. He noted, “I believe every school in Arizona should be using the Six Pillars of Character program to help students understand these basic characteristics that, when followed, result in students having overall strong character and classrooms that have students who respect others. This is foundational for a healthy society.”
There will be a ‘Character Education Celebration Event’ in January, where the winners of this new contest will be honored.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 28, 2023 | Education, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Arizona’s schools chief is literally turning his back to antisemitism.
Earlier this month, the Arizona Department of Education posted a picture on “X” of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne at a recent Board of Regents meeting with the caption, “Superintendent Horne will not tolerate antisemitism. When protestors started speaking in support of a terrorist organization at the Arizona Board of Regents meeting, he turned his back to hatred.”
This gesture from Horne follows a recent press conference he hosted to “denounce antisemitic and anti-American materials provided by two organizations at a high school club event that made Jewish students feel unsafe.” The high school where this action occurred at was Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale.
Horne minced no words in alerting the public to the dangers to students by the presence of these materials at this school – or any school in the state, saying, “The materials presented to these students were profoundly antisemitic in particular and anti-American, in nature. Some of the material states that ‘Palestinians have been subject to killings, torture, rape, abuse, and more for over 75 years.’ This is a ‘blood libel’ similar to the blood libels used in the Middle Ages to get people to go out and kill random Jewish people.”
In an interview with a national outlet, Horne explained why this issue has been so important to take a stand on, saying, “All of my extended family were killed in the Holocaust. So I grew up with just my parents and my sister. No grandparents, no nieces and nephews, no uncles or aunts. They were all killed. So when I see signs of antisemitism developing in the United States, you can imagine it’s something that affects me personally.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 26, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) gained a significant victory this week over Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
On Monday, the AZGOP announced that the ‘Patriot Party’ “failed to secure enough valid signatures to qualify for the 2024 ballot,” crediting the “unwavering dedication of over 50 volunteers who…meticulously reviewed over 37,000 signatures by hand.”
This update came days after the Party had issued a press release to accuse Fontes of “misusing his office to influence elections.”
In that communication, the AZGOP explained that the “Liberal Democrat Adrian Fontes quietly and drastically changed his procedures on political party petition filings and denied observer access and public records requests by the Arizona Republican Party.” According to the AZGOP, this occurred when Secretary Fontes allegedly failed “to notify the political parties with ballot access that an appointment had been made by the ‘Patriot Party’ to file signatures on their Petition for Political Party recognition.”
In their release, the AZGOP asserted that Fontes’ actions with the ‘Patriot Party’ filing was “a big departure from what (he) did when ‘No Labels’ filed,” adding that the Secretary’s motivation in running his office is “to help the Democrat Party and hamper (Arizona Republicans).”
The AZGOP outlined the process by which Secretary Fontes “conducted the No Labels filing,” which included the following steps:
- The Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian parties of Arizona were informed about the filing appointment ahead of time.
- All three recognized political parties were permitted to have observers present for the entire intake and SOS scanning of petitions with full observer coverage for chain of custody transition.
- The scans of the petitions, as filed, prior to SOS processing, were made available the morning after filing through a secure fileshare provided by SOS.
- The fileshare to which counties upload their processed samples was made available to all recognized political parties so that they could follow the filing process throughout.
As the release concluded, the AZGOP demanded that Secretary Fontes “restore the long history of impartiality that existed in the SOS’s office under Secretary Reagan, Secretary Bennett, Secretary Brewer and others.” The party asked for the Secretary of State’s Office to “fulfill (their) public records requests in a timely manner and maintain a fair and unbiased process for all filings made in (the) office.”
The AZGOP threatened Fontes with litigation if he were to “move to validate (the ‘Patriot Party’) as (an actual party) regardless in a partisan effort to hamper the Republican Party. That threat appears to be neutralized thanks to the State Republican Party’s hard work to go through the signatures itself.
With the saga of the petition signatures moving to the rearview window, the AZGOP is focusing on an extremely important election season in 2024, boasting of a “grassroots army of over 5,500 precinct committeemen in Arizona, combined with an additional 20,000 party volunteers.” The AZGOP noted that Arizona Republicans are “united in our mission to register more voters, champion family values, strengthen the economy, and advocate for better educational outcomes and parental choice.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 25, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
The Tucson Border Sector continues to be a hotspot for illegal immigration.
This past week, the U.S. Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent for the Tucson Border Sector, John R. Modlin, posted his weekly review of stats, showing the efforts of the men and women working under him.
Chief Modlin highlighted the following from his border sector that week:
- 14,300 Apprehensions
- 300 lbs of Fentanyl
- 183 Federal Criminal Cases
- 33 Rescues
- 15 Human Smuggling Events
- 7 Narcotics Events
- 2 Firearms Seized
The Tucson Border Sector continues to be one of the nation’s busiest regions, keeping agents on their toes as they seek to restore some semblance of order on the ground. In the first month of Fiscal Year 2024, October, this sector reported over 55,000 encounters of illegal immigrants, which was a 140.8% increase over the previous year’s numbers that month (22,938). Tucson Sector Officials recorded almost 374,000 arrests during the recently completed fiscal year.
These numbers, already significantly high for a sliver of the U.S.-Mexico border, do not represent the number of ‘gotaways’ escaping detection and making their way around the interior of America’s homeland. Nor do these figures fill in another major gap of the border crisis, which is the rampant drug smuggling that occurs all throughout the border – but especially in the Tucson sector. Drug cartels and smugglers occupy the time of border agents with thousands of arrests per day, while running drugs and ‘gotaways’ through other unmanned corridors. These dangerous factors of the porous border continue to haunt law enforcement at all levels as they attempt to do everything they can to protect innocent men, women, and children from harm.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 24, 2023 | Education, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Earlier this month, Arizona’s schools chief took a stand against antisemitic and anti-American materials at state schools.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne held a press conference to “denounce antisemitic and anti-American materials provided by UNICEF and Amnesty International at a high school club event that made Jewish students feel unsafe.”
The reason for Horne’s press conference, according to the release from the Arizona Department of Education, was due to tips from “several community members who had learned of antisemitic and anti-American materials being presented at a lunchtime club sponsored by those organizations…at Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale.”
Horne minced no words in alerting the public to the dangers to students by the presence of these materials at this school – or any school in the state, saying, “The materials presented to these students were profoundly antisemitic in particular and anti-American , in nature. Some of the material states that ‘Palestinians have been subject to killings, torture, rape, abuse, and more for over 75 years.’ This is a ‘blood libel’ similar to the blood libels used in the Middle Ages to get people to go out and kill random Jewish people.”
The Republican superintendent pointed out the failure of these materials to document the truth of the horrific attacks in southern Israel on October 7. He said, “In none of this propaganda is there any reference to what happened on October 7. The fact that 1,400 civilians were murdered does not begin to describe to horror of what Hamas did. They went house to house in the neighborhoods, machine gunning entire families, and sometimes killing fathers in front of their children and children in front of their fathers. They copied the Nazi technique of setting fire to houses so that people would burn to death, or if they came out of the fire house, killed them upon their exit. The actions of Hamas are a repetition of what happened during World War II. Yet the materials make no mention of October 7.”
Horne shared an email he had sent to each district superintendent across the state, asking that their schools refrain from inviting UNICEF and Amnesty International and soliciting any materials from these two groups to campuses. The schools chief warned that “giving aid and comfort to terrorists is contrary to US law,” and that the groups and their literature “generate antisemitism among impressionable young people.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
