Anyone who has watched Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) Governing Board meetings over the past two years has likely noticed how often Member Pittinsky cites his business experience and expertise. He presents himself as a thoughtful decision-maker, especially when the board considers difficult choices such as closing schools.
Yet when the facts conflict or information is lacking to support what Menzel wants—or with what is right for SUSD students and parents—Pittinsky consistently abandons those concerns and votes in support of Menzel.
That is the pattern followed by the union-backed majority of education professionals on the Governing Board.
At the September 8th board meeting, Pittinsky asked how many students might leave SUSD if additional schools closed. Emphasizing his business background, he explained that businesses call this “churn.” Menzel and his staff agreed to provide the information.
At the October 6th meeting, when the board discussed and voted on the Phase II committee’s school closure recommendations, staff presented its “churn” analysis.
Notice that staff acknowledged receiving parental input, likely referring to surveys in which more than 160 families reportedly said they would leave the district if Laguna closed, but did not treat it as a “driving factor” in calculating churn. Instead, staff gave more weight to travel time, competition, and historical attrition.
Consider the contradiction: a district that says it values parents’ input discounted families who said they would leave and relied more heavily on other factors.
Menzel and his staff presented this as meaningful analysis for a critical decision about closing schools. That is difficult to accept.
The central problem is that closing four schools in two years, with more closures possible, is unprecedented in SUSD. Historical attrition is therefore an unreliable basis for estimating the effects.
Pittinsky’s response makes clear that he was dissatisfied with the analysis.
Pittinsky said:
“As I think it was noted, I’ve asked for this for a long time. I do need to say I am disappointed and frustrated that it came so late in the process. Not to be clear because I view it as like this point estimate. You know you could say 65,64,63. It’s all a function of the assumptions. But so, I think anyone who looks at these, my judgment at least, anyone who looks at this as a point estimate, I think that’s false precision.”
He continued:
“I think we can and need to do better in developing a much more multi-dimensional model for thinking about these kinds of enrollment dynamics.”
Although Pittinsky criticized the analysis and said the board needed a more sophisticated understanding of why families choose SUSD or a competitor, he nevertheless concluded that “it doesn’t block me from feeling like I can make a judgment tonight.”
In other words, Pittinsky acknowledged that the analysis was late, imprecise, and based on an incomplete understanding of declining enrollment, concerns many community members have raised for years, yet still felt prepared to vote on closing more schools.
Is that the way Pittinsky makes decisions in his business? Asking for data, not getting it, but proceeding anyway. The next time he says he needs data before making a decision, can we believe him?
The board and staff not only lack a clear understanding of declining enrollment, they have also declined to seriously examine alternatives to school closures, despite Member Carney’s repeated requests over the past two years.
Is the SUSD community comfortable with major decisions being made without adequate data and without considering all available alternatives?
As the October 6thmeeting moved to the proposed alternatives and the vote, the board discussed how Mesa Public Schools was addressing declining enrollment. The exchange between Members Pittinsky and Carney became heated.
Carney noted that, a year earlier, she had asked the board to create a long-range planning committee modeled on Mesa’s. She questioned why SUSD was not considering Mesa’s other strategies instead of focusing solely on school closures.
Although alternatives like Mesa’s were not on the agenda, and district counsel repeatedly warned Pittinsky to stop so as to avoid another open meeting law violation, he continued the discussion and more than likely committed another violation. SUSD had been cited in the past for a violation by the Arizona Attorney General for discussing non-agendized topics.
Pittinsky insisted that he had researched the issue and argued that Mesa was starting from a very different position than SUSD. The issue is not whether districts statewide are losing enrollment, that is well documented, or what is the root cause of the decline, which SUSD has yet to determine. The key question is how each district responds.
Pittinsky then said, “Mesa actually did close schools. They closed or repurposed three junior high schools and they did it very early in a way that our board has been less willing to do.”
Notice how Pittinsky shifted from the definitive claim that Mesa “did close schools” to saying it “closed or repurposed” them. He also distanced himself from prior decisions by referring to “our board,” even though he has served on it for the past two years.
The point Pittinsky, Sharkey, Lewis, and Menzel appear to miss, perhaps deliberately, is that Mesa developed a plan for declining enrollment rather than closing schools first and asking what to do afterward.
Pittinsky’s research also appears to have overlooked publicly available information showing that Mesa’s schools and governing board are pursuing strategic ways to create “vibrant and thriving” schools rather than “disrupting and dismantling” the district, the way SUSD is doing.
“Mesa Public Schools will offer more educational choices to families by transitioning an elementary school into an accelerated learning campus and launching two new high schools for the 2026-27 academic year.”
“Because of dropping enrollment, the district has to think strategically and creatively, Superintendent Dr. Matt Strom said, “Or we’re probably going to be moving to school closure within the next three to five years.”
“We were fortunate to receive a lot of feedback from parents and community members that were excited and eager for this change to happen,” said Jacob Martinez, vice chairman of the district’s Planning and Boundary Design Advisory Committee.”
I believe that last year Member Carney asked for this same committee to be formed in SUSD. But “our board” rejected the idea.
Here are some excerpts from an article by Rachel Walden, Mesa Public Schools Governing Board Member, on how their board has been addressing the issue of declining enrollment.
“We adopted a small school model that allows a school to stay financially viable and continue to operate. These schools have shared resources, shared staff, focused specials, and aides may be leveraged differently than at a comprehensive campus. The model provides the opportunity to specialize and meet student interests.”
“Financial uncertainty also means we must explore ways to bring in revenue, which is underway at MPS. Mesa fully welcomes ESA families. The Eagleridge campus offers three full days of educational programming for K-12 students from across the Valley. Ninety-five percent of Eagleridge is funded through ESA dollars. The MPS board approved a fee schedule allowing families to use ESA dollars to participate in classes at other campuses, which increases revenue to the district.”
“Responsible budgeting requires continual evaluation. Positions not related to the classroom and not required by regulation or law can be eliminated in many cases. Courses with low student interest should be removed, which will change staffing needs.”
“If enrollment continues to decline, the Board may eventually have to consider school consolidation or closure. Those decisions should come only after other strategies have been exhausted and after careful consideration of student outcomes, finances, facilities, transportation and community impact.”
Notice how rather than just blaming ESA for declining enrollment, like Menzel does, Mesa schools turns it into a revenue stream for the district.
“Faced with ongoing student loss, Mesa Public Schools is looking to reconfigure six of its campuses for the 2026-27 year instead of closing sites.”
The bottom line is that SUSD’s Governing Board, dominated by Menzel’s supporters, has failed its students, parents, and broader community. SUSD cannot continue electing board members who place Menzel’s agenda above students’ interests.
It is time for a change.
Mike Bengert is a husband, father, grandfather, and Scottsdale resident advocating for quality education in SUSD for over 30 years.
Last year, residents of Page, a small town in northern Arizona, fought back against plans to reduce vehicle lanes on Lake Powell Boulevard, one of the town’s most important roads. This November, they have the opportunity to protect it by voting YES on Proposition 406. A Yes vote on this measure would prevent the City from reducing the road’s vehicle lanes without further voter approval, pumping the brakes on a proposed road diet.
At the center of the controversy is the Page Downtown Streetscape Master Plan, approved by the City Council in 2022. Among the plan’s proposals is a “road diet,” the quippy name for stripping perfectly good roads of their vehicle lanes, and narrowing streets to accommodate bikes, buses and other barely used transportation methods. In Page’s case, that means cutting two of the four travel lanes on Lake Powell Boulevard through the downtown business district, a stretch of about 1.4 miles.
Despite years of resident opposition, the idea remained on the table. So, residents took action, gathering around 1,000 signatures to put the issue before the voters. The City challenged the initiative, and the fight went all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court. In July 2025, the justices unanimously ruled that the initiative was legislative in nature and could proceed. In other words, the people of Page are allowed to vote on their own main street…
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether municipalities can set national energy policy by forcing oil and gas companies to pay for weather damages purportedly precipitated by carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from combustion of their products. While the question before the court hinges on constitutional provisions that reserve such power to the federal government, it is important to note that the premise of the case is scientifically invalid.
In Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County and City of Boulder v. Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil — the lead case in nearly three dozen similar suits — the producers of fossil fuels are blamed for the effects of bad weather. The suits are a coordinated effort to bankrupt energy companies and force an economically devastating “green” agenda on the public.
On Monday, lawyers for oil and gas companies argued in the U.S. Supreme Court that state and local governments are precluded by the Constitution from taking the kind of legal action in the Colorado case, reserving such power to the federal government. Those suing the companies would have the country’s 90,000 counties, cities, townships, boroughs, school districts, and so forth effectively setting national energy policy, suggested one attorney.
We agree that city hall should not be deciding whether the producers of coal, oil, and natural gas are allowed to stay in the businesses that make modern civilization possible. However, equally important is that the apocalyptic claim of a climate emergency underlying what could become hundreds, or thousands, of lawsuits is fearmongering with no basis in reality.
In Colorado, the record shows that temperatures have fluctuated, as one would expect, since the late 1800s. A modest rise since the mid-1970s is driven by nights becoming less cold, not by hotter days, and recent averages are comparable to earlier warm decades. Days at or above 95 degrees Fahrenheit have declined since a peak in the 1930s, the decade of the infamous dust bowl. Nights at or below zero have declined since the 1920s.
Annual precipitation in Colorado records significant fluctuations year-to-year but no overall decreasing trend, as recent values are comparable to those from past decades. Dry periods since 1999 can be partially explained by natural phenomena in the Pacific Ocean, namely El Niño and La Niña. Occurrences of floods show no clear worsening outside a few unusual years. Wildfires, tornadoes, and winter storms are not becoming more frequent or severe, according to official records.
In short, despite claims of “weather damages” from the modern use of fossil fuels, natural phenomena have exhibited little variation from the time before SUVs and multi-megawatt power plants.
If Colorado were suffering unduly from weather, agriculture would be a likely victim. However, crop productivity is increasing in Colorado and around the world. Much of this is due to longer growing seasons resulting from modest warming since that end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th century, agricultural innovation, and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
CO2 is not a pollutant but a trace atmospheric gas necessary for plant photosynthesis and all life. Higher concentrations increase plants’ growth and drought resistance. About 70% of global greening confirmed by NASA satellites has been attributed to CO2’s fertilization effect. Greenhouses routinely increase CO2 levels to boost crop yields.
As for warming from CO2, the effect of U.S. emissions from 2025 to 2100 is calculated to be about 0.13 degrees Celsius, and of Colorado’s approximately 0.0021 degrees. These are differences too small to be felt. Neither figure can support a damage award of any amount, much less one ruinous to international businesses and national economies.
Boulder seeks a monetary judgment, subject to treble damages, for health programs, “green-fit” streets and transit, and general climate mitigation. A parallel suit by Multnomah County, Oregon, has demanded as much as $51 billion. Lawyers associated with the Colorado litigation have described the strategy as a tax on oil companies and consumers. Plaintiff-aligned estimates of cumulative exposure run into the trillions.
A ruling for the companies would not strip states of authority over activities inside their borders. It would stop localities from using damage awards as a substitute for rational energy policy.
Whatever one thinks of the climate issue, its questions need to be answered according to the disciplined rationale of both the U.S. Constitution and scientific inquiry.
Angela Wheeler is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. She is a cum laude graduate of Emporia State University, Kansas, where she studied communication, with additional biology and pre-medicine coursework.
Arizona’s future belongs to its citizens. Only their votes should decide it, foreign money should not influence it, and they should not be left waiting weeks for answers after every election.
Proposition 144 puts those principles into Arizona’s Constitution.
You can read it for yourself. It is short, fits on one page, and in less than 200 words, it ensures that only US Citizens can register and vote, requires that every voter must show government issued ID before casting their ballot, bans foreign money in any of our elections, and allows all voters to tabulate their ballots on election day at their polling place and have their votes posted election night.
Together, these reforms will result in more secure elections and faster and more accurate election results.
Prop 144 Will Speed Up Results with On-Site Tabulation
Rarely do Republicans and Democrats find common ground on election policy. But in this year’s Maricopa County primary, officials from both parties recognized the benefit of an option Prop 144 would guarantee statewide: on-site tabulation…
Remember the pop-culture definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result? This fits like a hand to glove when we contrast the Prop 428 campaign against Peoria Unified School District’s (PUSD) failed leadership, increased cases of adult sexual misconduct, and dismal academic performance.
Peoria voters should understand that Prop 428 is not a new tax—it’s a continuation of the 13% maintenance and operations (M&O) override that’s been in place since the mid-90s. When voters rejected the M&O during the 2025 special election, it sparked panic among administrators (a.k.a. the 6-figure mafia) and teachers’ union members (a.k.a. union thugs). Educators—including those who stay silent when unethical and immoral conduct occurs on campus—are suddenly very vocal about Prop 428.
When I reviewed the fiscal 2024-25 State Superintendent Annual Report, I discovered that PUSD’s local, county and state M&O total revenue was nearly $290 million. Am I the only one who wants to know exactly how, when and where that money was spent in two years?
I emailed the school board and the Deputy Superintendent of Business Operations, Marcie Rodriguez, to request a presentation clarifying the district’s spending patterns. I also asked for confirmation on whether interim superintendent Tahlya Visintainer—who also oversees human resources—is still reaping Chief Personnel Officer pay and benefits. This is the position she held until Dr. Ryan LaDouceur was ousted from the interim superintendent role.
One PUSD educator reached out to seek my support for Prop 428. She shared her love for teaching young students and said that since the 2025 override failed, her school’s financial shortfalls sometimes forced staff members to choose between purchasing toilet paper or copy paper. She said she also solicited donations from relatives and community members when she couldn’t purchase the items directly.
I did my due diligence of making a public comment and requesting a resolution for every teacher in this predicament. I also included it in my email to the board and Rodriguez, letting them know it’s entirely unacceptable for any high-level employees to receive perks, bonuses or special allowances when the most important people in the district (namely students) don’t have access to daily essentials.
I will post an update once I have answers to these questions.
I don’t believe the teacher who reached out to me was a union thug with a sob story. Union members are typically the bullying type. Their tears are false and their demands are tough. Teachers’ unions don’t exist to enhance students’ learning experience—they don’t even exist for teachers! Most members I know are activists who serve as the school district’s militant. They await deployment, coming out in ranks whenever the community needs to be manipulated or intimidated into silence.
Case in point, the Peoria Education Association (PEA) president Devon Moseler sits like a guard near the podium at every PUSD board meeting. Also, when former PEA president Trina Berg makes a public comment, her requests and suggestions usually top the agenda for the next board meeting. But who knows, this could all be a coincidence, right?
PEA President Devon Moseler at Peoria Unified board meetings.
As of publication, PUSD received its third notice of claim. Similar to the two students who filed a complaint against the district in the Centennial High School situation, this alleged victim has also claimed that the district was grossly negligent in the case involving former Peoria High School basketball coach Patrick Battillo (a.k.a. “Mr. ORNG”). ABC 15 Newsreported that Batillo was convicted of attempted exploitation of a minor and sentenced to three and half years in April.
For those unaware, PUSD has been served with four legal notices in one year—all of them accusing the district of negligence and failing to protect students from employee sexual misconduct. The two from Centennial HS students and one from a Peoria HS student are a combined total of $27,650,000, as of October 9. No amount has been disclosed in the case of former Sun Valley Elementary students who were abused by former teacher Ricky Ordway. Meanwhile, the district’s Prop 428 is an estimated $33,000,000, with an expiration date of seven years.
Since M&O funds are less regulated in terms of how the dollars are spent, is it not possible for the district to campaign on promises of improved arts, athletics and special needs programs but then reallocate those funds to cover expenses associated with pending lawsuits? Someone who knows how these things work should reach out to me. I think PUSD is luring voters into a bait and switch, and the teachers who support Prop 428 probably won’t see more than a few dimes if the measure is approved.
On the contrary, if voters pass Prop 320, they’ll remove some of the administrative controls that have led to financial mismanagement and corruption in many public schools. This statewide ballot measure requires districts with over 7,500 students, or counties with more than 500,000 residents, to allocate 60% of its operation budget to classrooms and teachers. In this case, the auditor general determines what meets the threshold or definition of “direct instructional expenses.” This is why organizations like the Arizona School Board Association (ASBA) and Save Our Schools Arizona (SOS) oppose Prop 320. They want to maintain the status quo and stick taxpayers with the bill.
Nevertheless, Peoria taxpayers don’t owe the district anything. If one or two failed overrides can cause everything to fall apart after 20 years of guaranteed 13% approval, then there’s a bigger problem that more money won’t fix. Students are falling through the cracks, school sites are lacking basic necessities, alleged predators and failed mandated reporters are thriving after leaving the district. It appears the only way to hold PUSD accountable is to let Prop 428 fail. At least with Prop 320, we have some assurance that site funds will go towards education.
With enrollment declining in PUSD, staff reductions and school closures are expected. This is what competition looks like in a state with a robust school choice movement. When we add up multiple cases of alleged adult sexual misconduct, anti-ICE protests, and a majority of students graduating without basic life skills, it’s clear why parents are exploring other options. A loss of market share in government education is net positive for the state and the nation at large. Parents are stepping up to do what God called them to do (Proverbs 22:6).
All this to simply say, Prop 320 makes sense but passing Prop 428 is insane.
Remember, elections have consequences.
Tiffany Benson is host ofThe Myth of Education Podcast. She has been a parental rights and student safety advocate since 2022.
There are some principles we like to think America settled a long time ago. Racial discrimination is wrong. Government should not treat people differently because of the color of their skin. And our public institutions should judge individuals based on their merit and character – not their race. Unfortunately, those previously settled principles have been completely undermined by the radical “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) program.
This November, Arizona voters will have an opportunity to reaffirm that principle by voting YES on Proposition 142. The measure would strengthen Arizona’s constitutional protections against race-based discrimination and preferential treatment, close an existing loophole tied to federal funding, and prohibit some of the craftier ways public institutions have used to preserve race-based DEI policies and practices.
Isn’t Racial Discrimination Already Illegal?
Most people already believe it is unlawful for the government to discriminate based on race – and didn’t Arizona already prohibit it anyway?
Arizonans certainly thought they had.
In 2010, voters passed Proposition 107 by an almost 20-point margin, amending the state constitution to prohibit the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any person based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting.
This should have closed the door on government-sanctioned racial preferences in Arizona.
