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AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS www.ahwatukee.com
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
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21 tribes seek Preparing for a pot fight intervention in AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS freeway case ABM VS. RATS
NEWS
BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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LANDMARK OWNER PASSES
Longtime Plaza Hardware owner succumbs at 90
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(Larry Mangino/AFN Staff Photographer)
Neighbors and parents are fuming over a state license for a medical marijuana dispensary issued for a building not more than six feet from the playground of Grace Garden Christian Preschool on 48th Street just south of Elliot Road. Preparing material for a meeting to organize a fight against those plans are, from left, school director Catherine Thomson, an unidentified assistant and former assistant director Joy Bradshaw. For details, see p. 4.
Kyrene audit finds significant deficiencies at all levels EXCLUSIVE BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
COMING SOON! Spring Training Guide
A
sweeping audit found major deficiencies throughout the Kyrene School District, from an absence of clear policy-making by the school board and insufficient planning by the administration to inadequate teacher development and instructional technology to a widening gap in student achievement. The audit, four months in the making and involving hundreds of interviews and hundreds of pages of documents, was
unveiled Tuesday night at the governing board meeting. The AFN obtained a copy of the audit’s executive summary, which lays out the highpoints of the audits’ findings. Among its key findings is that the district shows “significant achievement gaps…in the performance of non-white, economically disadvantaged and special education students.” “In order to address persistent gaps in student achievement, the board, district leadership, and district staff will need to address institutional practices and beliefs See
AUDIT on page 8
ll 21 Native American tribes in the Southwest are asking permission to join the appeal against the South Mountain Freeway, but Arizona’s attorney general says they’re too late and wants them shut out. The new fight before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has emerged in papers filed by the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Inter Tribal Association of Arizona, which includes 21 federally recognized Indian tribes in Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico. In asking permission to be included in the appeal, both Native American entities call South Mountain a sacred site and said plans to have the freeway cut a 200-foot-wide path through three peaks is a desecration forbidden by federal law, sets a “dangerous precedent” and poses a “disproportionate” impact on the Gila River Indian Community. In response, the state Attorney General has asked the Ninth Circuit to dismiss the requests, contending that both groups are raising issues that were never presented to U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa. Hence, Attorney General Mark Brnovich argues, the issues cannot now be raised on appeal. Humetewa last July gave the go-ahead to the $1.77 billion project ‒ the most expensive freeway project in state history ‒ after rejecting a slew of arguments by the Gila Community and Ahwatukee-based Protect Arizona’s Resources and Children. They contended that the environmental impact study of the freeway’s impact was fundamentally flawed, that the cut into South Mountain desecrated a sacred tribal site and that the freeway posed significant health threats for residents and school See
INTERVENTION on page 18