In an apparent response to the push from teachers’ unions to revert to remote learning for at least two weeks if not more, Governor Doug Ducey announced Monday that all of Arizona would continue with in-person learning.
In a thread, Ducey reminded Arizonans of President Joe Biden’s stance on keeping schools open, as well as the past actions of unions striking for higher pay after being promised higher pay. For the latter reference, Ducey was citing his promise of a 20 percent raise.
“IN-PERSON LEARNING WILL CONTINUE IN ARIZONA[.] ‘The science is clear, and overwhelming. We know how to keep our kids safe from COVID-19 in school. K through 12 schools should be open.’ That’s from President Joe Biden. And public health experts agree. Yet union leaders are telling parents to prepare for remote learning. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, this is the same union that encouraged a teacher strike well after a teacher raise was proposed. Once again, teacher unions are playing political games with no regard for the social and emotional impact on our kids. Parents shouldn’t stand for it — and will remember these antics at the ballot box. And at the state level, we’ll be working to ensure in-person learning continues. From recruiting more substitute teachers, to ensuring that if a student is turned away for even one day of in-person learning, parents have a choice and the resources to take their child to a school that better meets their needs.”
IN-PERSON LEARNING WILL CONTINUE IN ARIZONA
"The science is clear, and overwhelming. We know how to keep our kids safe from COVID-19 in school. K through 12 schools should be open." 1/
Twitter tagged the following warning to the governor’s thread: “Some conversations get heavy[;] Don’t forget the human behind the screen.”
Ducey issued a similar Twitter thread announcement last March several weeks before the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 being announced as a national emergency. That thread announced Ducey’s executive order for all schools to continue March 15 — several days after the one-year anniversary of former President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration.
“ANNOUNCEMENT: Getting kids back in the classroom is one of the most important things we can do as we see #COVID19 cases drop and vaccinations underway. A majority of Arizona public schools are already open, and school leaders have demonstrated in-person instruction is possible to do safely. The @CDCgov has laid out a path for every school to open safely. Public health experts nationally have spoken about the importance of getting kids back in school. In Arizona, teachers have been prioritized for the vaccine, and many school districts are reporting that nearly all of their educators have received both doses. Today, I’m issuing a new Executive Order. It requires public schools to get back to teacher-led, in-person instruction by March 15, or after Spring Break. I know not every parent feels comfortable sending their kids back to school. So virtual learning will continue to be an option for those families. But many do want to go back, and this will require schools to provide that opportunity. The science is clear, and so are the social and behavioral impacts. It’s time to get kids back in the classroom. I’m confident that Arizona has made better progress on this to date than many other states, and today’s action will speed up that process even more.”
ANNOUNCEMENT: Getting kids back in the classroom is one of the most important things we can do as we see #COVID19 cases drop and vaccinations underway. 1/
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) at the time of this report, there have been 1861 reported workplace fatalities from COVID-19. OSHA issued an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) requiring employers to report employees that were hospitalized or died from COVID-19, “regardless of the amount of time between the exposure to COVID-19 in the work environment and the death or in-patient hospitalization.
These OSHA reports are given within eight hours of a fatality, or 24 hours of a hospitalization.
According to the latest counts, there have been over 24,300 deaths related to COVID-19 in Arizona. In the last six months, a total of over 6,300 deaths have occurred. Nearly 72 percent of deaths occurred in individuals over 65 years old. Nearly 16 percent of deaths occurred in individuals aged 55 to 64 years old.
Nearly 8 percent of deaths came from individuals aged 45 to 54 years old. 5 percent of deaths came from individuals 20 to 44 years old. Nearly 0 percent of deaths occurred in individuals under the age of 20: .2 percent, to be exact.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) latest reporting noted that less than half of those deaths occurred within the last six months: 20. That’s just over zero percent of deaths within the last six months: .3 percent.
For the last six months, 60 percent of COVID deaths occurred in individuals over 65 years old. 19 percent were individuals aged 55 to 64. 12 percent were individuals aged 45 to 54. 9 percent were individuals aged 20 to 44.
In both counts from the last six months and all time, the majority of COVID-19 deaths occurred in men and white, non-Hispanic individuals.
For all time, 71 percent of COVID deaths occurred in individuals over 65. 16 percent were in individuals aged 55 to 64. 8 percent were in individuals aged 45 to 54. 5 percent were in individuals aged 20 to 44.
Again, just over zero percent of deaths were in individuals under 20 years old: .2 percent.
The death rates have remained consistent, despite the recent winter surge prompted by the Omicron variant. The surge mirrored that of last year, though this year’s spike of 14,000 was 3,000 less than the spike that occurred then. According to genetic marker review of the state’s COVID-19 cases, over 87 percent of recent cases were of the Omicron variant.
Even with the number of under-20 COVID-19 deaths, the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) has been pushing for parents to vaccinate their children. Dr. Richard Carmona, appointed by Governor Doug Ducey as a special advisor for the pandemic, suggested to parents that they should vaccinate their children because the vaccine could prevent injury and death, though he admitted COVID-19 doesn’t pose a serious harm.
“The science is sound. The science tells us this is the right thing to do, and we have a long, long history of understanding how vaccines work, and how it’s prevented our children from getting all of these diseases that grievously can cause serious harm and death — and today we don’t see that in our society if our children are vaccinated,” stated Carmona.
Carmona serves as a board of directors member for McKesson, a major distributor of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona educators have a new resolution to kick off 2022: a return to remote learning and school closures, with the struggle over school funding placed on the backburner temporarily. Teachers unions are calling for schools across Arizona to hold off on in-person learning for another two weeks due to the holiday spike in COVID-19 cases.
Arizona Daily Independent reported on a key player in the push to pause in-person learning: Rebecca Garelli. She was also a critical player in the establishment of RedforEd, a teachers union activist movement, and a founding member of Arizona Educators United (AEU), a local affiliate of the National Educators United (NEU). AEU’s domain is defunct currently, though their Facebook page remains active.
Garelli encouraged people to sign onto a letter from NEU to delay school openings for another two weeks.
The letter was published the same day AEU published the results of a “Return to Safe Schools” survey by RedforEd to determine support for school reopenings.
Of the nearly 500 responses from Arizona educators and community members spanning 81 different school districts and charter schools, 56 percent said “yes, with reservations” to reopening, about 24 percent said “no,” about 18 percent said “yes,” and about three percent qualified as “other” responses. Concerning work-related stress attached to in-person work: about 39 percent were “extremely stressed,” about 28 percent were “moderately stressed,” about 11 percent were “mildly stressed,” about 11 percent were “typical[ly] stress[ed],” and about 10 percent were “not stressed at all.
The Arizona transplant came from Chicago, where she made tens of thousands more — at least about $12,800 more —while working as a middle school math and science teacher in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) than she has in Arizona. According to open records, Garelli made around $80,800 a year as a middle school teacher and for three years an additional estimated $7,400 as a CPS consultant, then $69,000 with the Arizona Department of Education (ADE).
NotInOurSchools reported Garelli’s hire and relocation to Arizona following the appointment of Kathy Hoffman, the current Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. Garelli also serves on the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission Steering Committee.
The unionists’ timing this year to strong-arm a halt on returning to classrooms wasn’t novel. Last New Year’s Eve, Garelli suggested educators take coordinated “sickouts” and “other actions” on behalf of NEU.
This year, Garelli promised that she wouldn’t be sending her children to school “anytime soon” due to the increase in COVID-19 cases.
Another key player in the RedforEd founding, Arizona Education Association (AEA) President Joe Thomas, also called for remote learning. The AEA is a state affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA).
Parents should be preparing for a temporary shift to remote learning. It will be due to not enough staff being able to report for work. https://t.co/xUqrn6mYC5
Garelli, Thomas, and Dylan Wegela led AEU, which oversaw and organized the RedforEd movement. Noah Karvelis — a Littleton Elementary School District (LESD) music teacher quickly appointed as president of the Littleton Education Association (LEA), a local AEA affiliate, and AEU co-founder — told the Shanti Journal in a 2018 spotlight interview that RedforEd started as a Twitter exchange between him and Thomas. That interview has since been removed from the journal’s website.
“RedforEd is a movement to increase funding for education in Arizona. The primary goal is to restore the $1.1 billion in education funding cuts. It all started with a tweet between myself and Joe Thomas discussing what the climate among educators in Arizona was like,” stated Karvelis. “Ultimately, we decided to have me start a RedforEd day.”
December of 2020, the NEA claimed that mitigation measures like remote learning were far more important than the effects they had on schoolchildren. The association claimed that the children were “resilient.”
“Yes, it’s been difficult. There is learning loss. There are social-emotional challenges. In some cases, there is sickness, economic hardship, or trauma,” wrote the NEA. “But students are extremely resilient.”
Yes, it’s been difficult.
There is learning loss.
There are social-emotional challenges.
In some cases, there is sickness, economic hardship, or trauma.
Last October, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared that the current state of youth mental health qualified as a national emergency.
The next month, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published an opinion in USA Today urging schools nationwide to keep schools open. They cited the 50 percent decline in child and adolescent COVID-19 cases nationwide from late last August to late October.
“[I]t’s on adults to recognize that our highest responsibility to children and youth is to lift up their needs; equip them to be physically, mentally and socially healthy; and give them a chance, at long last, to thrive,” wrote the two officials.
A Maricopa County company that pays back taxes on properties across Arizona in hopes of one day securing deeds to the properties is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to restore its deed to a commercial property in Nogales.
It is estimated more than 2,000 investors hold nearly 90,000 back tax liens in Arizona. In Maricopa County alone, tax liens could be issued for more than 10,000 parcels during the county’s next auction on Feb. 8, 2022.
By law, Arizona property taxes have the highest lien priority, and about 98 percent of liens are eventually paid off by property owners within the three-year redemption period. But sometimes an investor is able to go through the lengthy legal process to foreclose on a property and obtain the deed.
That is what Advanced Property Tax Liens Inc. did in 2019 on a tax lien it obtained from the Santa Cruz County Treasurer’s Office in February 2015 for a commercial property in Nogales. Now, the company is hoping the Arizona Supreme Court will reverse a local judge’s ruling which voided the deed issued to APTL when the property owner did not redeem the tax lien.
Court records show the material facts of the APTL case are undisputed, such as the verbal agreement between Victalina Carreon and Jorge Othon in late 2014 or early 2015 for Othon to purchase a vacant building Carreon owned in Nogales. The property’s purchase price was $450,000 minus an amount Carreon owed for unpaid property taxes.
The sales agreement was never put into writing, but Othon made payments to Carreon using money “on which he had avoided paying taxes,” according to court records. Soon after the commercial property was “a fully occupied commercial property” with normal business hours, according to court records.
But Carreon never applied any of Othon’s payments to the delinquent property taxes. As a result, APTL purchased a tax lien on the property during a February 2015 auction by Santa Cruz County and paid the outstanding property taxes and accrued interest.
Fast forward to September 2017 when Othon finished paying Carreon and received a notarized deed listing himself as the new property owner. He chose to not record the deed with the Santa Cruz County Recorder, nor did he inform the county’s assessor or treasurer of his ownership of the property. Othon also failed to provide county officials a mailing address for tax bills or valuation notices.
Instead, Othon allowed the property to remain in Carreon’s name.
In January 2018, and with the three-year tax lien redemption period near expiration, APTL mailed Carreon two notices that the company intended to foreclose on its 2015 tax lien. The 30-day notices, one mailed to the physical address of the commercial property and one to Carreon’s last known residence, were returned by the U.S. Postal Service as unclaimed.
Eventually APTL filed a foreclosure action in Santa Cruz County Superior Court naming Carreon as the property owner. A process server hired by APTL attested that service was attempted at Carreon’s last known address, an empty residence.
With no forwarding address from the post office, APTL published a notice of its tax lien foreclosure action in a Nogales newspaper. The company then filed a court notice in December 2018 allegedly Carreon had been properly served via the newspaper and had failed to answer.
A default judgment was entered by the court against Carreon, allowing the county to issue a treasurer’s deed conveying the Nogales property to APTL in March 2019. The company immediately recorded the deed as the new owner, but there was a sticking point – Othon and his 2017 unrecorded deed.
APTL filed a complaint for quiet title of the property while Othon filed a counterclaim seeking to void the treasurer’s deed and have his deed from Carreon recorded. In the end, Judge Denneen Peterson voided the default judgment but not because of Othon.
Instead, she ruled APTL failed to adequately comply with state law when notifying Carreon, as the property owner of record, that the company intended to pursue foreclosure of the 2015 tax lien. APTL attempted to serve the notices on particular addresses instead of a specific person as required by state law, Peterson ruled.
The judge’s ruling voiding APTL’s deed to the property was recently affirmed by the Arizona Court of Appeals. The appellate opinion described APTL’s deficiency:
“After both notices were returned unopened and unclaimed, APTL never approached personnel at the Property—the situs address—or at neighboring buildings to seek additional information regarding Carreon’s whereabouts,” the opinion states.
Now the company has filed a petition for review to the Arizona Supreme Court.
It could be weeks or months before the Arizona Supreme Court decides whether to consider APTL’s petition for review. If Peterson’s ruling holds up, APT still owns the original 2015 tax lien and can begin the process again to assert its interest.
The Arizona Association for Economic Development (AAED) will host a two-day virtual Rural Housing Symposium later this month, bringing together developers, citizens, elected officials, and myriad stakeholders to address the challenges facing rural housing in Arizona.
The Jan. 12 and 13 virtual event will be held from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. each day on the Whova platform. There is a $60 registration fee for the event, which will include a discussion of the current state of rural housing, the overall importance of housing to a community, housing programs and resources, community and regional solutions, how to leverage data, and workforce housing.
Among the Day One speakers is Evelyn Causga, director of community and economic prosperity for the Center for the Future of Arizona. She will be joined by Tim Suan, deputy town manager for the Town of Wickenburg, to discuss the current state of rural housing in Arizona.
“Housing is playing a pivotal role in the overall economic success of every community,” Suan says. “This makes housing the most important topic in the state of Arizona.”
Day One’s keynote speaker will be Mary Chicoine of the Verde Valley Economic Council. She will lead a discussion with Jennifer Perry of the Arizona Community Foundation on turning data into action for community and regional solutions. They will be joined by officials from Clarksdale, Cottonwood, and Sedona.
Tom Simplot, director of the Arizona Department of Housing, will provide the Day Two keynote speech about the importance of housing. Other Day Two participants will be Thomas Ryan of Housing America Corp.; Jeff Hays with USDA Rural Development; Sarah Darr from the city of Flagstaff; and Devonna McLaughlin of Housing Solutions of Northern Arizona.
Also announced as participating in the symposium are Alison Cook-Davis of the ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy; Joan Serviss with AZ Housing Coalition; Sandi Flores of Catholic Charities; Jerry Stabley with AZ American Planning Association; Sheila Harris of Harris Consulting; Mark Lambing for Dominium Apartments; Rick Merritt and Daniel Court of Elliot D Pollack & Company; Kim Covington with Arizona Community Foundation; Ruby Dhillon-Williams from Arizona Department of Housing; and Sally Schween of Gorman & Co.
Phoenix Police Department (PPD) leadership informed city council that they may have to stop responding to certain 911 calls due to their shortage of police officers. PPD Chief Jeri Williams shared with the Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee at the start of this month that they haven’t made such a policy official yet, but may have to in order to offset the workload created by 370 vacancies.
They had 27 recruits going through academy and 31 officers-in-training. PPD has 2,755 total officers. The fifth-largest city in the nation had over 1.6 million people according to the 2020 census — approximately 17 officers per 10,000 residents.
The proposal was based on a study from Arizona State University (ASU). The university identified eleven call types: intrusion alarms, assisting fire departments with unruly patients, drug overdoses, loose animals, public marijuana smoking, civil matter stand-bys, abandoned vehicles, found property, minor vehicle crashes without injuries, illegal parking, and noise complaints. Williams suggested that the last six call types could be mitigated by civilian members or assistants and not PPD, and that public marijuna smoking calls were nullified with the legalization of marijuana.
Williams suggested that eliminating police response to intrusion or false alarms, fire department assistance and/or check welfare calls, drug overdoses, and loose animals wouldn’t be good for public safety. PPD recorded 60,000 welfare calls and 552 drug overdose calls.
Civil matter stand-by calls have to do with incidents like exchanges of children, roommate relationships, and merchant or customer relations. Williams reported that PPD received about 14,000 of civil matter stand-by calls annually, 10,000 abandoned vehicle calls, 3,200 found property calls, 26,000 minor vehicle accidents without injury calls, 10,000 minor vehicle hit-and-run, 6,200 illegal parking calls, and 14,000 noise complaint calls.
Overall, Williams reported that PPD received 2 million calls in 2020 with 660,000 of those dispatched, and 1.8 million calls in 2021 with about 614,000 of those dispatched.
“This is just preliminary information that we’re going through. We didn’t want you all or members of the public to be surprised by the types of calls we’re looking at. We’ve made no decisions on these whatsoever, we’re really just trying to introduce the topic and idea,” explained Williams.
The second adjustment was PPD’s new “deferred patrol response” program where officers come into the station and work overtime by assisting with calls, taking reports, and handling paperwork.
The third adjustment was changes to PPD’s dispatch protocol concerned changes to dispatch protocols.
In all, Williams touched on six different improvement efforts: in addition to call type reduction, deferred patrol response, and dispatch protocol changes, PPD has undertaken programs implementing civilianization, body worn cameras for all officers, and specialty back to patrol. PPD also introduced efforts to increase officer retention and morale, such as raises.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
