Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) has approved an application for expansion of federally-funded mental health clinics to seven schools. Board member Heather Rooks was the sole “no” vote on the measure.
The funds are part of a five-year award with the Mental Health Service Professionals (MHSP) Demonstration Grant through the Department of Education (ED).
PUSD was one of 27 school districts nationwide to receive MHSP grant funding originally in 2019. Through that grant, expiring at the end of September, PUSD has maintained three social work field instructors. This new round of funding will maintain and expand the mental health services to those schools without them.
The 2019 MHSP grant funded partnerships with the internship pipelines in Northern Arizona University, Grand Canyon University, and Arizona State University; social work intern field instructors; training for school social workers and school mental health counselors; conference attendance; training school social worker interns (totalling 83); training for teachers, staff, and administrators; purchasing of skill building materials and resources; and parental resources. All of these would be funded through the 2024 grant to a greater degree to include those schools without MHSP resources.
The district’s seven schools, which represent 24 percent of the student population, that don’t have direct mental health services are: Cactus High School, Liberty High School, Oakwood Elementary School, Sunset Heights Elementary School, Frontier Elementary School, and Vistancia Elementary School.
Across these schools, the district reported in its grant narrative draft elementary students exhibiting greater instances of self-harming behaviors, suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression, aggression, bullying, cyberbullying, poor relationship skills, and poor conflict resolution skills. High school students were reportedly exhibiting similar behaviors, including a handful of suicides and attempted suicides in the last school year.
In that school year, the district reported just over 1,200 “crises events” that required intervention: suicide risks, child abuse or neglect, or severe emotional distress.
The district has about 34,700 students across 43 schools, with about 47 percent qualifying for free or reduced lunch. PUSD is the fourth-largest district in the state.
Public comment against the measure expressed concerns about student safety, such as data mining and “lab rat” handling of the students. Some wondered why the district would offer such a private service that they considered to be a parental responsibility.
A supporter of the measure, Vanessa Goolsby with the Peoria Education Association, said that it was the social workers that prevented the “bad things” from happening to children.
The board defended the expansion of social workers as a much-needed resource.
Melissa Ewing said that concerned community members were confusing the mental health services provided by schools and the medical community. Ewing said the former isn’t comprehensive, in that the district doesn’t staff doctors, provide diagnoses, or prescribe medications.
Ewing stressed that social work intervention doesn’t occur without parental consent, and that the data supports social work intervention as effective in improving academic performance.
David Sandoval said the expansion of services was needed due to the rise in mental health issues.
Board member Bill Sorensen said that the social workers have done good work for children in need beyond mental health services.
Rooks expressed concern that the district was taking on mental health cases instead of referring families to outside providers, and contested that some diagnoses must be happening for the district to be able to report identifying certain behavioral problems.
Rooks said that State Representative Beverly Pingerelli, a former board member, described the initial MHSP grant from 2019 as part of a much smaller initiative that, she says, has grown way out of proportion. She also contested the claim that the social workers operate under parental permission, noting that one parent’s son had been pulled numerous times from classes to discuss his mental health with a social worker — without parental consent — despite undergoing outside treatment arranged by his parents.
President Becky Proudfit said that she trusted the district social workers to provide healthy and safe services to students, and that her own children have benefited from them.
Watch the PUSD discussion of the MHSP grant here:
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
GOP Senate candidates Kari Lake and Mark Lamb traded barbs this week over their views of one another’s handling of the 2022 election.
Lake and Lamb confronted one another during an online forum hosted by the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) Action last week. The panel was not meant as a debate — Lake recently refused to do a formal debate with her primary opponent — but it ultimately turned into one.
Lamb accused Lake of “surrendering to the establishment,” and that her lack of public service experience made her unsuitable for office.
“It’s easy to talk about it if you’ve never served, it’s another thing to actually do it,” said Lamb. “I’ve actually had to make hard decisions. I’ve been in there when we’ve had to stand up against COVID and say we’re not doing the lockdowns, we’re not doing the mask mandates, we’re not doing the vaccines.”
Lake accused Lamb of cowardice for not using his law enforcement authority to pressure a change of outcome in the 2022 election, where she lost her gubernatorial race to Governor Katie Hobbs. Lake further claimed that law enforcement leaders submitted proof of election fraud to Lamb.
“I took every hit fighting for security in our elections. Sheriffs had the ability to fight, and the sheriff in Pinal County cowered, and he’s a total coward when it comes to election integrity,” said Lake.
Lamb speculated that Lake began calling him names because his assessment of her “touched a nerve.” The sheriff said that Lake was telling lies about his handling of mismanaged elections, clarifying that Pinal County fired those responsible for the underprinting of ballots, and established cameras and citizen monitors of drop boxes.
“Yes, we didn’t print enough ballots [in 2022] in Pinal County, and guess who didn’t complain about it because she won the primary? Kari didn’t. It didn’t matter to her until the general election,” said Lamb.
Lamb said that no one has been able to provide him with evidence of widespread fraud, but that he doubted President Joe Biden received as many votes as reported.
“I live in a world of evidence, what you can prove in court beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Lamb. “Any one of these people, including Kari, could’ve brought me the evidence that was actionable for me in court to do something about it.”
In a press release responding to Lake’s attacks, Lamb said Lake was a “bully” with a bold disrespect for the rule of law. Lamb disputed that Lake or any others presented to him any evidence indicating widespread material of fraud.
“Kari’s use of the word ‘coward’ is a slap in the face to every man and woman that upholds our laws and wears a badge and uniform,” said Lamb. “Her blatant disregard for the rule of law is not what Arizonans would expect someone running for the United States Senate to ever say, especially during what was supposed to be a civilized political discussion.”
Lamb added that Lake was lashing out at others for losing the election.
“I took an oath of office to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and uphold law and justice,” said Lamb. “I have to deal with facts, not opinions or feelings. I get it. Kari Lake is upset she lost her election. It’s time she takes some personal responsibility for losing an election she was supposed to win.”
The most recent polls show Lake trailing Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego in the race. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Lake.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
The state spends billions more on wealthy students who attend public schools than through the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA), or universal school choice program, according to a new analysis of federal census data from the Goldwater Institute.
The study released earlier this month culminated data from the last five U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Surveys ranging from last year to this year assessing school enrollment types for K-12 children across various household incomes.
The Goldwater Institute found that together, the data revealed that nearly one-third of public school students came from households earning over $100,000, of which about half came from households earning over $150,000.
The study disclosed that the Census data, though aggregated, was limited as general approximations due to coming from sample sizes.
Over 80 percent of children from higher-income households enroll at taxpayer expense in Arizona public schools, at a much higher rate than the ESA funds. About 1.1 million students in all attend public schooling.
Goldwater estimated that the higher rate amounts to anywhere from $2 to $4 billion annually for children from households earning over $100,000, and anywhere from $1 to $2 billion for children from households earning over $150,000.
“[W]hen it comes to funding higher-income students in the public school, the state is being charged specifically for those students, whose collective presence in the public school system does add significant cost to the public school system: both variable and fixed costs, including the necessity to hire additional staff or construct or renovate for larger campuses,” read the report.
The minimum formula funding for one public school student is about $7,500 annually for a baseline. That number rises to $12,200 with the inclusion of other funds like district overrides, bonds, and school facilities funding. The minimum tops out at over $14,700 with the inclusion of federal funding.
By comparison, Goldwater reported that average ESA funds amount to about $7,400. These students also lose out on several sources of fixed and variable costs, such as the Classroom Site Fund, and those funds revert back to the public school system.
Overall, the institute estimated that it costs taxpayers 10 to 20 times more to educate students of wealthy families in public schools than it does for similarly-situated families in the ESA Program.
The Goldwater Institute issued the study on the heels of Governor Katie Hobbs’ January announcement of a budget plan to revoke ESA Program scholarships from nearly 50,000 students.
Aggregated data collected by Goldwater in the course of their research further suggested that about 20 percent of private schoolers came from households with an income under $50,000, while about 50 percent came from households with an income under $100,000.
As for homeschoolers, the institute found that nearly 60 percent of those students hailed from households with income levels under $100,000.
In addition to state and Census Bureau data, the report relied on research from the National Center for Education Statistics, Reason, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
Governor Katie Hobbs announced that she would be recognizing birth control as a right, starting with state employees.
The governor issued an executive order on Monday announcing free birth control for state employees, and ordered the state’s Medicaid agency, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), to expand contraception access to its members.
The state already issues oral contraceptives to employees at no cost, but only through a prescription. Hobbs’ executive order got rid of the prescription requirement, ordering the Arizona Department of Administration (ADOA) to cover the cost of current and future over-the-counter contraceptives for state employees.
Hobbs referenced Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli’s take on contraceptives as a criticism of Republicans hesitant to make birth control a right for Arizonans through legislation dubbed the “Right to Contraception Act.”
“While members of our legislature would rather tell Arizona women to put aspirin between their knees than pass the Arizona Right to Contraception Act, I will continue to do everything in my power to protect our reproductive freedom and ensure every Arizonan can access contraception,” said Hobbs.
Access to contraception is a right — and now, I am taking action to protect that right by issuing an Executive Order to expand access to free and affordable birth control for Arizonans.
My EO will make birth control available at no cost to State employees and require @AHCCCSgov…
— Governor Katie Hobbs (@GovernorHobbs) May 20, 2024
Earlier this month, the governor signed into law a repeal of the longstanding and, until the past year, dormant total abortion ban. Now, state law only restricts abortions after 15 weeks.
The governor’s most recent executive order declared that contraceptives qualify as “essential health benefits” (EHB) required of health plans by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare.” And, recent changes to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) enabled states to have more flexibility to determine its EHB-benchmark plan set of benefits.
Only the prescription contraceptives qualified as EHB, not over-the-counter ones. Hobbs’ executive order changed that. For now, that only applies to Opill, the only FDA-approved over-the-counter birth control option.
Excluding the universities and Board of Regents, both of which operate their own personnel systems, nearly 56 percent of the state’s nearly 38,300-strong workforce is female: around 21,300 individuals.
Age ranges weren’t defined by ADOA’s annual report, though the average age across both genders was about 44 years old, under the average age of menopause.
The retail price of Opill, the over-the-counter targeted by Hobbs’ executive order, retails at up to $20 per month for a one-month supply.
ASU has more than 20,600 employees. According to their last 10-year report of campus demographics ending in 2022, the university had nearly 10,600 female employees, though the age ranges weren’t disclosed.
The University of Arizona reported nearly 16,700 employees last fall, with about 56 percent of them identifying as female. Age wasn’t disclosed.
Northern Arizona University’s annual report shared they had over 4,600 total faculty and staff last year, not distinguished by gender or age.
ADOA will also be required to provide several reports to Hobbs’ office, one of which will be on benefits and feasibility of access expansion for state employees. That report will be due by June 30.
Another report with ADOA and the Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions will study the benefits and feasibility of a new Arizona Essential Health Benefits Benchmark Plan mandating reproductive healthcare benefits for individual and small group private health insurance plans, including prescription and over-the-counter contraceptives, reversible contraceptives, infertility treatment, and in vitro fertilization.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
The city of Scottsdale unanimously held off on approval of a sustainability plan during Tuesday’s regular council meeting after mass backlash from citizens.
The plan, in the works since 2021, is part of an implementation of the voter-approved General Plan 2035, and the city’s 2022 and 2024 Organization Strategic Plans. Arizona State University (ASU) Walton Sustainability Solutions Service (WSSS) and the Scottsdale Environmental Advisory Commission (SEAC) played roles in getting the sustainability plan together.
Lisa McNeilly, the city’s sustainability director since 2022, gave the presentation on the proposed plan during Tuesday’s meeting. McNeilly was formerly the sustainability director for the city of Baltimore, Maryland from 2017 to 2022, and UC Berkeley from 2008 to 2017. Prior to those roles, McNeilly served as director of international programs for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change (now the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions), and special assistant for President Bill Clinton’s White House Climate Change Task Force.
McNeilly said that Scottsdale’s sustainability plan — focused on energy, water, waste, air quality, and extreme heat — would not only benefit the environment but afford cost savings, health and safety improvements, and economic vitality.
The five-point framework of the plan focuses on energy, water, waste, air quality, and extreme heat.
Energy targets included reducing citywide and municipal electricity use, citywide and municipal greenhouse gas emissions, and the average energy burden for all households; increasing distributed solar capacity both citywide and municipally, and the percentage of “green” buildings.
Strategies to meet these energy targets focused on reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, improving municipal energy performance, and reducing energy impacts of the built environment through sustainable building practices and policies.
Water targets included reducing residential, municipal, HOA irrigation, and commercial water use; increasing return flow percentage; maximizing annual water banking; and maintaining treated groundwater deliveries to Safe Yield levels.
Strategies to meet these water targets focused on ensuring water system resiliency and reducing municipal water usage.
Waste targets included reducing single-family household, citywide, and municipal landfill refuse; achieving diversion rates ranging from 35 to 90 percent across homes, the city, and municipalities; increasing the percentage of recycling; achieving the diversion rate of brush and bulk waste stream; diverting 30,000 tons annually of citywide organic waste from the landfill; and achieving a recycling contamination rate below five percent.
Strategies to meet these waste targets included increasing diversion rates, strengthening local markets for recycled content, expanding opportunities for diverting organic waste from the landfill, and reducing waste generation.
Air quality targets included reducing unhealthy air days, illnesses for pollution-related health events, and municipal fleet fuel use; and increasing the number of publicly available electric charging ports.
Strategies to meet these air quality targets included “cleaning” the city’s air and supporting adoption of electric and other alternative fuel vehicles.
Extreme heat targets included reducing average July daytime and nighttime temperatures, average surface temperatures, and illnesses for heat-related health events; and increasing tree and shrub canopy.
Strategies to meet these extreme heat targets included expanding heat relief communication and education, protecting people from the health effects of extreme heat, identifying urban design improvements including structured shade and built environment, and planting more trees along with the implementation of other nature-based solutions.
McNeilly emphasized that the plan wouldn’t be enforced through any current or future mandates. It’s unclear to what degree this clarification measures up to a promise: in 2022, the city mandated a “Green Construction Code” for commercial and multifamily buildings that, just a decade earlier, had come into play as a voluntary incentivized option.
The city’s plan didn’t estimate exact costs for the actions and strategies, instead assigning three potential cost ranges to each: up to $50,000, from $50,000 to $250,000, and over $250,000.
During public comment on the proposed plan, Scottsdale residents expressed disdain for the plan.
Austin Fairbanks, a senior research analyst in the State House, said that the plan would have minimal impact on the climate compared to the fiscal and quality of life costs imposed on residents.
Fairbanks said that even if 100 percent of all new Scottsdale buildings went “green” in their construction going forward, the city would only achieve “green” for 8.8 percent of all buildings at the current pace, below the goal of 10 percent — which Fairbanks estimated would come at a cost of $90 million.
“Those are just two examples where logic and fiscal prudence were thrown out the door to accommodate this Green New Deal-style agenda,” said Fairbanks. “We’re told this is an aspirational document, but if you were to adopt this plan, it would be a policy standard for the council and staff that you want to meet these goals. And the easiest ways to achieve those goals is by increasing fees and imposing costs and mandates.”
Fairbanks said that Scottsdale contributed 0.00067 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions: even if the city reached its goal of a 90 percent reduction threshold, it would impact less than seven-millionths of total greenhouse gas emissions. Fairbanks estimated that the cost to nearly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, though not given by the city in its proposed plan, would amount to $280 million for taxpayers.
“Trying to socially engineer residents to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a total of seven-millionths of the total is the wrong approach,” concluded Fairbanks.
Jim Davis with the Coalition of Greater Scottsdale (COGS) expressed concern that fiscal stability wasn’t prioritized enough by the city in its approach to implementing a sustainability plan. Davis urged the council to focus on boosting tourism, and to back off on high-density residential units due to their low revenue and negative impact on city attractiveness.
“The city is underinvesting in its assets. COGS believes the city is not sustainable,” said Davis.
However, COGS board of directors member Sonnie Kirtley said through a submitted written statement their organization supported the sustainability plan.
Councilman Tom Durham said that the plan was “critical” to Scottsdale’s future. Durham characterized public discontent with the plan as a reticence to pay for the sustainability goals. The councilman said it was “misinformation” that the city would introduce mandates to support its sustainability goals.
“People say we can’t do anything, but we have to: it’s part of our commandment,” said Durham. “Some people thrive on disinformation and finding the government boogeyman behind every door, and we all recognize that’s for political purposes, much of it.”
Councilwoman Betty Janik said that sustainability was nothing to do, and that this new plan was just a continuation of the same direction they’d been heading down. Janik compared the city’s sustainability plan to major invention breakthroughs in history that weren’t preceded by proof of concept: Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, American astronauts walking on the moon for the first time, and AIDS treatments.
“We cannot force [the sustainability plan] on you, it’s something you have to accept and believe in,” said Janik.
Councilman Barry Graham said he didn’t appreciate his fellow council members “casting aspersions” on the residents, such as calling them “keyboard warriors.” Graham said the plan went too far and was both contradictory and vague in its proposals: significant water reduction for residents while planting more trees, and a lack of specificity regarding costs of all goals.
“We’ve gotten hundreds of emails from residents who are confused or find elements of the plan extreme,” said Graham.
Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield expressed concerns about the “unintended consequences” of the actions proposed, namely the greater cost for citizens for less access to utilities and city services, such as water, waste, and power.
“Since when have we as citizens given the city the kind of power or right to monitor our homes and businesses and our lives to this kind of extent?” said Littlefield.
Littlefield noted that she has never seen such a unanimous, overwhelming rejection by the citizens of an issue as the sustainability plan. Out of hundreds of emails, Littlefield said she only received two in support of the plan.
Councilwoman Tammy Caputi said that citizens were missing the “point of the plan.” Caputi insisted that no mandates would come from the plan. She expressed confusion at the community resistance to the plan, saying she felt she hadn’t heard of this mass resistance before in the past two years of the plan’s development.
Mayor David Ortega stressed that the sustainability plan would be important to implement for Scottsdale’s future wellbeing. Ortega said that the city was running out of its resources and bearing a greater cost for them: landfills for waste, water, energy, and clean air.
The city’s presented sustainability timeline, stretching back to 1967, included the major policy changes and actions undertaken in recent years, such as the banning of natural grass in new single-family homes and addition of solar infrastructure last year; the mandate of a Green Construction Code in 2022; and the approval of the 2035 General Plan in 2021; the installation of LED streetlights in 2020.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
