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Wednesday, April 29, 2020
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Uncertainty clouds school districts’ financial future BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
T
he economic meltdown created by the COVID-19 pandemic is worrying school district officials as they prepare budgets for the fiscal year beginning July 1. While some experts nationally fear that school districts nationwide could lose thousands of teaching jobs and see sharp declines in student performance as a result, Tempe Union and Kyrene school districts may be able to weather the storm at least for a while, local officials say.
Nonetheless, uncertainty over how quickly the economy might be able to recover and how long the virus itself will require social distancing has cast a pall over 2020-21 budget preparations by school districts – as it has for virtually all government entities as they see revenue streams dry up. “We have been having a conversation about impacts to budgets and impact to funding and impact on schools since day one of the school closures,” Kyrene Chief Financial Officer Chris Hermann told the Governing Board last week. “We’ve been trying to understand what that means to our current budget, what that could
mean to our future budgets and even beyond if the economy had more than a 12 to 18-month impact.” Kyrene is looking at a tentative General Fund budget of about $113 million for 2020-21 – an increase of about $3.3 million. Hermann said closures already have cost the district about $4 million in revenue, mostly from Community Education fees for beforeand after-school programs and other enrichment activities that the district can’t offer because campuses are closed.
see SCHOOLS page 7
ADOT, cyclists debate freeway shared-use path details BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
U
ntil it gave way to the South Mountain Freeway, Pecos Road was a mecca for hundreds of bicyclists who relished it as an ideal straightaway for speed and exercise amid the beauty of the desert. And thanks to the efforts of a couple generations of Legislative District 18 lawmakers, both past and present, the Arizona Department of Transportation agreed to build a sixmile, 20-foot-wide shared use path along the southern edge of the freeway from 40th Street to 17th Avenue not only for cyclists but also for joggers and walkers and other people. But while ADOT is working on that path as well as the 32nd Street interchange with an eye toward a mid-summer completion date for both projects, the cycling community has not had an entirely smooth ride dealing with the agency. Joe Struttmann and other cyclists are at odds with ADOT over some of the planned or al-
Work on the six-mile shared-use path on the southern edge of the South Mountain Freeway continues, though cyclists and ADOT are debating some features. (Tom Sanfilippo/Inside Out Aerial)
ready installed features on the path – which is about half completed, extending roughly from 17th Avenue to a point between the 24th and
32nd street interchanges. Struttmann has spent untold hours research-
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see PATH page 4