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TU, Kyrene elevate mental health focus BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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THUNDER’S NEW LOOK
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s elementary and high schools in Ahwatukee reopen their doors and say goodbye to summer, a new priority is joining the three Rs and STEM. In an almost unprecedented fashion, Tempe Union and Kyrene officials this school year are addressing what the National Education Association calls the “mental health tsunami of a generation.” Kyrene children return to school tomorrow, Aug. 1, while Mountain Pointe and Desert Vista high schools open Monday, Aug. 5, for the new year. Horizon Honors reopened Monday. With a recent study by the Journal of Pediatrics reporting that “millions of children across the U.S. are experiencing depression, anxiety and/or behavioral disorders,” both Tempe Union and Kyrene have ramped up social-emotional learning in a variety of ways inside and outside the classroom. The reasons for the new emphasis are as much about academic success and safety as they are about a concern for addressing the total well-being of each student. “Today’s students are struggling,” Jen Liewer, Tempe Union’s executive director of com-
Estrella Elementary School teacher Judi Rivera gets her classroom ready in anticipation of Kyrene School District’s opening day of the 2019-20 school year tomorrow, Aug. 1. (Pablo Robles/AFN Staff Photographer)
munity relations, told the school board earlier this month. “They have faced more stress and challenges than in previous generations. It’s for a multitude of reasons. I think if you ask 10 different people, what do you think is the cause of this, you’ll get 10 different answers,” Liewer con-
tinued, noting that Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child “offers scientific proof that stressed brains cannot learn.” Student safety also is a concern. Students earlier this year and last December
The residents say the blasting — which has gone on for several months and is expected to continue for at least a few more weeks — is louder and more forceful than the year of blasting they put up with along the path of the South Mountain Freeway less than a half mile away. They’re next door to the new development, called Las Brisas. Crews are taming the rugged, rocky terrain to make way for 197 new single-family houses that are expected to start going up by the end of the year. Residents said the blasting is nothing like
what Blandford told them in letters to expect. “They said it wouldn’t be any more of a vibration than the big truck going down our street,” said Joan Stern. “They said certainly it won’t be anything like the (Loop) 202 blasting, but this is much worse.” Stern said her house often vibrates from the blasts and that “one time I heard something snap in my kitchen, like a rafter or something. I couldn’t find what it was but it has me concerned.” Stern, who has lost knickknacks that shat-
see SCHOOL page 6
Developer’s blasting rattles Foothills neighborhood BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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ven before the first models are built, a new subdivision has become a scary neighbor for some Ahwatukee residents. Homeowners along East Glenhaven Drive in the Foothills HOA say Blandford Homes’ repeated blasting on a 63-acre parcel on the southwest corner of Desert Foothills Parkway near Frye Road has been shaking their homes, scaring their pets and raising concerns about cracked walls and broken pipes.
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see BLASTING page 13
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