CITY UTILITY DEBTS RISE
DISEASE FAKER NABBED
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From Uptown to Downtown, covering Chandler like the sun.
An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
This Week
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CUSD moves up reopening for some BY KEVIN REAGAN Arizonan Staff Writer
Kyrene starting ‘rolling return’ to classrooms. Page 10.
NEWS................................14
No Ostrich Festival this year after all.
BUSINESS...................... 23
New eateries undeterred by pandemic.
SPORTS........................... 27
Chandler's Shin moves closer to NHL dream. NEWS........................................ 3 COMMUNITY....................... 20 BUSINESS...............................23 SPORTS...................................27 CLASSIFIEDS..........................28
September 6, 2020
A
divided Chandler Unified School District Governing Board has voted advance the reopening of classrooms by letting kids in preschool through second grade back on campuses by Sept. 14. Partially bowing to the wishes of many concerned parents, the board last week
voted 3-2 on a staggered reopening, with third-sixth graders returning Sept. 21. High school and junior high students will remain in distance learning until the October start of the second semester and students in all grades can continue to remain learning at home if their parents want them to. The board’s decision reverses plans set earlier this summer that delayed all in-person teaching at Chandler Unified’s 42 campuses until Oct. 13 in order to avoid the risk of students and staff contracting COVID-19. But county and state public health data shows the transmission risk has dropped to
Tight Census deadline catches cities by surprise
a level that experts believe is safe enough to allow for a hybrid approach to for students. The board’s decision Wednesday came the day before the county Public Health Department released the latest data on virus cases per 100,000 people, the percent of new positive tests and the percentage of hospital visits with COVID-19-like symptoms. The county data, covering the last week of August and updated every Thursday afternoon, shows Chandler Unified now has a minimal level for the latter two benchmarks
see SCHOOLS page 8
A new voice in town
BY GARY NELSON Contributor
W
ith millions of dollars and equitable political representation at stake, Chandler and other East Valley cities are rushing to complete their 2020 census efforts in the face of a suddenly tight deadline imposed by the Trump administration. Tens of thousands of East Valley households already had responded to the census by mid-August, answering either online, by phone or by mail to the constitutionally mandated head count. But many more remain to be counted. By city, response rates ranged from 75.8 percent in Gilbert to 62.1 percent in Tempe – with widely varying rates from neigh-
see CENSUS page 3
Chandler City Councilman-elect OD Harris has some theories on his election win and some definite plans to give voice to the under-heard people he thinks helped his victory. Details: page 6. (Pablo Robles/Staff Photographer)