by azfreenews1 | Jun 21, 2021 | Education, News
By Corinne Murdock |
One of the latest diversity hires by Arizona State University (ASU) for their Shakespeare program researches and promotes critical race theory. She is one of five others hired recently on the basis of their race and similar perspectives on that race within academia.
Soon-to-be assistant professor Dr. Brandi Adams shared with ASU in an interview that she’s especially excited about her ongoing work in premodern critical race studies, and how that intersects with the history of reading.
The first search return for “premodern critical race studies” is a website on Ayanna Thompson – the same Regents Professor of English and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies director that hired Adams and four other “diverse” professors.
According to the Folger Shakespeare Library, premodern critical race studies argues that there were times in history that perceptions of race didn’t exist. Instead, other aspects like faith and family were scrutinized.
“Today, premodern critical race studies scholars are offering new insights into the prehistory of modern racialized thinking and racism. They are helping to create anti-racist spaces.”
Adams spoke at the Folger Shakespeare Library on the subject in March.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk0efa_6PF4&t=4s
As for application of Adams’ research in premodern critical race studies, she shared in the ASU interview that the research would be part of a chapter for a collected volume on the relationship between premodern critical race theory and the histories of books and reading.
Adams’ dissertation, Representations of Books and Readers in English Renaissance Drama, didn’t focus on premodern critical race theory.
Additionally, Adams recommended four novels. All of the recommendations were steeped in social justice messaging such as race and climate change. These were: “American Spy” by Lauren Wilkinson, “Broken Earth” by N.K. Jemisin, “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee, and “The Old Drift” by Namwali Serpell.
Last June, Adams published a piece on Medium that relayed a postmodernist approach. She criticized Senator Tom Cotton’s (R-AK) remarks implying that Shakespeare’s works were an integral influence on American principles, linking Cotton’s physical attributes such as his skin color to his perspectives, beliefs, and morality.
Adams took offense to Cotton’s “effortless alignment of Shakespeare with both the casual and systemic racism woven into our national landscape.” She decried the universal conflation of Shakespeare and “whiteness.”
“Cotton remains wholly unoriginal in claiming Shakespeare as fundamental to a white American university education,” wrote Adams. “He is, however, part of a disappointing recent trend of public figures, critics, filmmakers, and even scholars who have continued to adapt, appropriate, or write about Shakespeare’s plays with a problematic central tenet – that there is a specific perspective needed to regard them. More often than not, the lens through which we are asked to consider these plays is that of a white, cisgender, able-bodies, man who often vociferously insists that he embodies the universal interpretive mode for all conversations about Shakespeare.”
Adams will work under the Department of English and the Arizona Center for Medieval Renaissance Studies. Some of her forthcoming works include chapters, articles, or reviews focused on premodern critical race studies, inclusivity, “Blackness,” and race.
Adams didn’t respond to AZ Free News’ request for comment by press time.
Corinne Murdock is a contributing reporter for AZ Free News. In her free time, she works on her books and podcasts. Follow her on Twitter, @CorinneMurdock or email tips to corinnejournalist@gmail.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Jun 21, 2021 | Education, News
By Corinne Murdock |
Just over 87 percent of parents support school choice, according to a recent survey by Wordtips. The greatest majority of parents to express support were Black or African American parents at nearly 58 percent, followed by Hispanic or Latino parents at about 51 percent. A slight majority of parents reported that the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t change their perception of school choice; 2 in 5 parents supported school choice more since the pandemic.
776 parents were surveyed across the country. Nearly 53 percent were female and over 47 percent were male, averaging about 39 years old.
The study explained that nearly 90 percent of parent respondents understood the concept of school choice. A majority of respondents familiar with school choice were White, with Black or African American parents coming in a close second. Hispanic or Latino parents ranked third in familiarity, with Asians ranking last.
Access to safe schools was the primary reason that 87 percent of parents support school choice. Parents were nearly split on the runner-up reasons for supporting school choice: choosing better schools outside the district, greater flexibility for parents, supporting children’s talents, and better resources for children with learning disabilities or special needs.
Additionally, the concept of inclusivity was a sweeping reason for parental support of school choice: just over 65 percent of parents agreed with that sentiment. They believed it would make private and charter schools more inclusive environments.
Republicans strongly supported school choice by about 6 percent more than Democrats; independents and Democrats nearly tied on strong support, with Democrats strongly supporting school choice by about half a percentile more. Although, independents ranked higher on somewhat supporting school choice than both Republicans and Democrats.
Generation X strongly supported school choice slightly more than millennials.
Nearly half of the parents that expressed support for school choice reported that they don’t use it. The vast majority of those respondents explained that it was due to living in a district with a good public school.
Of the 116 parents that opposed school choice, over 46 percent said they were deterred by private and charter schools’ ability to deny admission. 42 percent reported that vouchers don’t provide full tuition. The three reasons listed after those two are often the top arguments for opposition to school choice: it takes away funding from public schools, it would lead to privatization of education, and it would benefit wealthier families over low-income ones.
Additionally, 46 percent of parents feared that school choice harbored a hidden agenda in which religious institutions would receive indirect, secret funding.
When asked what priorities schools should have, 43 percent of parents believed that “life skills” classes should be taught. A close second in desired priorities was increased teacher wages.
Corinne Murdock is a contributing reporter for AZ Free News. In her free time, she works on her books and podcasts. Follow her on Twitter, @CorinneMurdock or email tips to corinnejournalist@gmail.com.
by azfreenews1 | Jun 20, 2021 | News
By Terri Jo Neff |
An insulting comment emailed from the principal of a Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) elementary school to another employee in which she called some parents “whackos” and criticized the district board’s handling of a meeting has been called out by a former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Diane Douglas called on PUSD Superintendent Dr. Jason Reynolds to publicly address “the overt and covert contempt which has been and continues to be expressed towards the community” by Tonja Neve, who is principal of the Desert Valley Elementary School in Glendale until June 30.
“That board meeting was ridiculous,” Neve wrote on Feb. 1 to Jennifer Mundy, an administrator of another district school. “”I’m sick of us giving these whackos a platform to spread propaganda without making any correction statements.” Neve was referring to about one dozen parents who addressed the board about Critical Race Theory.
Another email between Neve and Mundy that day shows the principal believed the administration “has some control to quiet those pushy voices.” She also provided information about a court case which reinforced the power of principals to set boundaries in parent-school communication.
Douglas directed her comments at Reynolds in an opinion published last week in the American Daily Independent. But she was not merely relying on her experience from 2015 to 2018 in a state executive office where she was responsible for ensuring the accurate and lawful distribution of nearly $6 billion in education funding.
In her comments, Douglas points out she has an even bigger reason for speaking up, having been elected as a member of the PUSD board from 2005 to 2012, serving as board president in 2008 and 2009.
Douglas’ letter was prompted by PUSD’s release of some of Neve’s emails in response to a public records request. There was also the fact the school’s American flag was displayed inverted on June 14 – Flag Day.
“As if an employee of a government school, funded by taxpayer dollars, referring to the parents and citizens who pay her salary as ‘whackos’ was not bad enough, now there is the displaying of an inverted American flag,” Douglas noted to Reynolds. “Such utter disrespect to our country and the very citizens she is hired to serve would be disgraceful on any day. But that such a stunt occurred on June 14th Flag Day –the day we honor and commemorate the adoption of the American Flag– makes it all the more inexcusable and unforgivable.”
Douglas added that “the only saving grace is that school is out of session and the students weren’t witness to such blatant disrespect of our flag by an entity of the very government it represents.”
Neve’s contract with PUSD expires June 30 after which she will move her family to take a principal position at an elementary school in New Hampshire. Earlier this month she issued a statement about her emails.
“My comments were unprofessional and I apologize for that,” Neve said. “My comments were in regards to audience members who were coming to our board and calling teachers out by name and misconstruing and devaluing the hard work they do. My comment was made in the heat of the moment and in defense of my profession and colleagues.”
But Neve’s departure should not be the end of issue, Douglas told Reynolds.
“With all due respect, in my humble opinion, the Board and the PUSD community are entitled to an explanation as to how administration intends to handle such incidents of disrespect toward the community going forward,” she wrote.
by AZ Free News | Jun 20, 2021 | News
Home value appreciation continues to break records and typical time on market is down to just six days. Meanwhile, rents are rising quickly across the U.S., breaking out after growth was stymied under the pandemic.
Annual home appreciation reached 13.2% in May while monthly growth was 1.7%, both of which are new records within Zillow data reaching back through 1996. Typical home values now stand at $287,148 . Month over month growth accelerated in 47 of the 50 largest U.S. markets and decelerated in just three — roughly matching the local market heat in April.
Austin retained its lead in annual appreciation with a blistering 30.5% increase over 2020, followed by Phoenix (23.5%) and Salt Lake City (20.6%). Even the metros with the lowest annual appreciation — Orlando , New Orleans and Oklahoma City — still put up historically strong numbers above 9%.
Typical rents rose substantially, accelerating from 1.3% monthly growth in April to 2.3% in May — the largest monthly appreciation since 2015. Rents hit $1,747 in May, up 5.4% or $89 over last year. Rent appreciation is especially strong in the Inland West. Of the 100 largest U.S. metros, the top eight for annual rent growth are Boise , Phoenix , Spokane , Las Vegas , Riverside , Stockton , Fresno , and Albuquerque — all with increases higher than 15%.
The list of major cities with lower rents than last year shrank again, as Seattle and Chicago clawed into the green. Only the expensive coastal metros of San Francisco , San Jose , New York , Boston , and Washington D.C. remain in the red.
Zillow economists forecast home values to increase by 14.9% by May 2022 , an upward revision from the April forecast. Home sales are expected to reach 5.91 million in 2021, a 4.8% increase over 2020.
Mortgage rates listed by third-party lenders on Zillow began May at a monthly high of 2.69%, dropped down to a mere 2.63% on May 7 and 10 — close to all-time lows — and ended at a monthly high of 2.84%. Zillow’s real-time mortgage rates are based on thousands of custom mortgage quotes submitted daily to anonymous borrowers on the Zillow Group Mortgages site by third-party lenders and reflect recent changes in the market.
by Terri Jo Neff | Jun 19, 2021 | News
By Terri Jo Neff |
The failure of the Patriot Party of Arizona to properly circulate petitions in its effort to recall House Speaker Rusty Bowers is the latest example of how difficult it can be for the average citizen to comply with confusing laws written by legislators to protect themselves from recalls.
On Thursday, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) announced it would not count any of the estimated 24,500 signatures contained on 2,040 recall petitions submitted by the Patriot Party of Arizona. The reason given by the SOS is that the petitions sheets were not attached to a “time-and-date marked copy” of the recall application.
A recall petition states the reason a recall election is being sought against a current elected official. It also includes room for several registered voters within the jurisdiction of the elected official to affix their name, address, and signature.
The number of signatures needed to get a recall election on the ballot is determined by state statute; for Bowers’ recall organizers it was 22,311. But before any signatures can be gathered someone had to apply for a recall serial number by which all paperwork will be filed and tracked.
It is two other recall statutes which have tripped up at least two other recall efforts in recent years due to the fact the two statutes have to “taken together,” the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in 2019. Such an interpretation requires a “time-and-date marked copy” of the recall application with the official serial number to be “attached” to each petition sheet.
The Patriot Party of Arizona declined to comment on the SOS’s determination about the non-attached applications.
Bowers attracted the wrath of the Republican-spinoff group by not supporting 2020 election fraud claims and not pushing back against Gov. Doug Ducey’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public support for the recall effort came from well-known pro-Trump names, including attorney Sidney Powell, America Restored executive director Tomi Collins, and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.
For his part, Bowers (R-LD25) publicly stated this week he expected to stand later this year for a recall election. “I was gearing up to go through a recall,” he said.
The non-compliance by the Patriot Party of Arizona is somewhat similar to the situation Tanya Duarte found herself in when trying to recall then-Mayor Robert Uribe of Douglas in 2019. Duarte applied for a recall number and made dozens of copies of the time-date copy of the application, which were placed behind each petition on a clipboard.
This made the application readily available for anyone to read, Duarte later testified. The Douglas city clerk initially certified 668 petition signatures, more than enough to force Uribe to stand for election 10 months before the end of his term.
But Uribe’s wife -as a Douglas voter- challenged all of the signatures due to the lack of applications attached to the petitions.
Judge David Thorn of the Cochise County Superior Court heard the case and noted that lawmakers failed to include a description in the recall statutes for how the application copy is to be attached to the petition. He even pulled out an ordinary dictionary to review definitions of the word attached.
In the end Thorn ruled the common language definition requires the application copy to be affixed or adhered to the petition whether “it be tape, staple, glue” or some other manner to ensure the two documents are not easily separated.
Thorn also commented that the Legislature “gets to make laws, to make it more exacting” for average citizens to recall public officials.
The Arizona Supreme Court also tackled the recall process in 2019 after the Urban Phoenix Project political action committee (Committee) ran into the “attached” issue during its attempt to recall then-City Councilman Michael Nowakowski in 2018.
The group submitted petitions containing more than 2,300 signatures from which the city clerk deemed enough were valid to make Nowakowski stand for election again. But a voter of Nowakowski’s district challenged the city clerk’s decision, arguing in part that a copy of the application was not attached to any of the petitions.
A Maricopa County judge ruled the City Clerk should not have counted any of the petitions due to missing copies of the application. The case went to the Arizona Supreme Court where then-Chief Justice Scott Bales authored a unanimous opinion which acknowledged the effort it takes to collect so many signatures.
The opinion also noted the recall statutes can be confusing for most citizens. But the two separate statutes related to circulating petitions have to be read together in order for any signatures to be valid, Bales wrote.
“The time-and-date-marked copy of the application –unlike the petition sheets– both identifies the applicant (including any organization, certain officers, and contact information) and reflects that the application has in fact been filed. Requiring the attachment of a such a copy also helps ensure that signatures are not obtained before the application is filed,” consistent with state law, he wrote.
“Our state constitution guarantees voters the right to recall elected officers for whatever reasons they choose…That right, however, must be exercised pursuant to constitutional and statutory provisions,” Bales added.
by AZ Free News | Jun 19, 2021 | News
Governor Doug Ducey today signed a bipartisan relief package to support firefighters and safety officials as they battle wildfires, ensure Arizona communities have the resources necessary for post-fire disasters such as flooding and reduce the risk from future wildfires.
The $100 million package passed with strong bipartisan support during a legislative special session called by the Governor after a visit to the Telegraph and Mescal Fires last week.
“We are in the midst of another catastrophic wildfire season, and it’s clear that we need to do more to fight these wildfires,” said Governor Ducey. “Many Arizona communities have already felt the impacts of this year’s wildfire season — people and pets have been displaced, homes have burned down, swaths of land have been decimated. I’m grateful that we were able to quickly come together in a bipartisan manner for the safety and protection of our communities. My thanks goes to our first responders working tirelessly to combat these fires, local and state agency leaders for their leadership during this time, and the legislators who worked across the aisle to get this bill passed.”
The wildfire relief package was led by a bipartisan group of legislators representing both rural and urban Arizona, including House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Representative Gail Griffin, Representative David Cook, House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding, Senate President Karen Fann, Senate President Pro Tem Vince Leach, Senator Sine Kerr and Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios.
House Bill 2001 includes:
- $24.6 million for a partnership between the Department of Forest and Fire Management and the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry to reduce wildfire risk to Arizona communities by removing fire-prone vegetation; and
- $75 million for fire suppression efforts, recovery efforts including post-fire floods, economic assistance for those displaced, and assistance to landowners for emergency repairs to infrastructure damaged by wildfires.
“Thank you, Governor, for allowing us to work together, and thank you, Minority Leader Bolding and Leader Rios, for your help on an issue where we can come together for a common goal,” House Speaker Rusty Bowers said. “People who aren’t Republicans or Democrats – they’re just our friends and people.”
“I look forward to partnering with my colleagues on continuing bipartisan success because wildfires don’t care which party you belong to,” said Senator Sine Kerr, who introduced House Bill 2001’s mirror legislation in the Senate.
Arizona is currently in the midst of fire season, having already experienced 918 wildfires burning over 245,000 acres this year. The Telegraph Fire visited by the Governor last week is currently the sixth-largest wildfire in state history.
“There is no question that there was an enormous need to dedicate as many resources as possible to fight the currently active wildfires as well as to prevent future ones from occurring,” Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios said. “I applaud the governor for calling a special session to address this extraordinary wildfire season. This was clearly a major issue that needed immediate attention, and I’m grateful for Governor Ducey’s action in bringing bipartisan leadership to work together to address this critical need.”
“We must do what we are doing today to react to this emergency, but we must also do everything in our power to mitigate the crisis for future generations – and we must do that together,” House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding said. “Thank you again, Governor Ducey. My colleagues in both the Republican caucus and our caucus stand ready to work together and ready to move forward.”
The Governor was also joined by Department of Forestry and Fire Management Director David Tenney, Department of Emergency and Military Affairs Director and Adjutant General Kerry Muehlenbeck and Gila County Supervisor Steve Christensen.
“I’d like to thank the Governor for calling this special session on behalf of Gila County and rural Arizona,” said Gila County Supervisor Steve Christensen. “The leadership in Gila County says thank you for being an advocate for Arizona. I’d like to extend my thanks to the Legislature and their willingness to work in a bipartisan way.”
On June 9, the Governor issued two Declarations of Emergency in response to the Telegraph and Mescal Fires in Pinal and Gila Counties. The orders made up to $400,000 available for response efforts, and followed a request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a Fire Management Assistance Grant on June 6.
In March, the Governor signed Senate Bill 1442 to prevent wildfires by allowing for additional partnerships to employ Arizona inmates to clear forests of debris. The legislation aligns with the Arizona Healthy Forest Initiative proposed in the Governor’s budget which builds on proven methods to protect communities, while engaging individuals in state correctional facilities to equip them with new skills and reduce recidivism.
