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Homebuyers hit a Game on wall in Ahwatukee BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
AHWATUKEE.COM BATTLEGROUND
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he top analyst of housing market trends in the Phoenix Metro Market last week sounded the alarms for homebuyers in 2021 that can be boiled down to one word: desperate. The Cromford Report said that while January is normally the best month for new listings to come on line, the shriveling inventory of both resale and new homes is reaching historic lows. That includes Ahwatukee. “Since the turn of the year we have been closely watching to see if the arrival rate of new listings would improve and make the supply situation somewhat easier,� Cromford said last week. Instead, new listings have “arrived at a feeble rate, lower than the January of the last three years and well below what we had been expecting based on December’s patterns,� it said, concluding: “As a result, the overall supply situation has got
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Teen athletes showed what they thought of the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s Jan. 8 decision to cancel winter sports in schools. They demonstrated outside the AIA headquarters last Tuesday to demand it reverse that decision and the board did exactly that. See the story on page 39. (Pablo Robles/AFN Staff Photographer)
Demands for open classrooms hit Kyrene board . 28
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AFN.pdf 4 12/1/2020 8:59:46 AM
BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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yrene’s newly constituted Governing Board last week got a taste of what their counterparts in Tempe Union High School District have been hearing for months – demands by some angry parents to open classrooms. And last week parents sharing that sentiment in both districts got an ally in their ďż˝ight – Gov. Doug Ducey. “Parents need to put pressure on the dis-
tricts and if the districts aren’t going to open, parents need to vote with their feet,â€? Ducey said in an interview Friday on KTAR Radio’s Mike Broomhead show. “There’s thousands of kids inside classrooms today all over Arizona. Parents who need their kids to learn virtually, that option remains available, but the parents who want their kids inside a classroom, like me, need to ďż˝ind a school where they can get inside a classroom,â€? the governor added. The interview climaxed a week that began with the governor using his annual State of
the State address to warn districts he would not fund “empty seats� and that ended with his 2021 -22 budget proposal calling for funding summer school to help kids close the learning gap that educators believe has developed from prolonged school closures. He also proposed new funding strategies to promote charter schools. (See story on page 14.) Ducey also offered no chance of equalizing per-pupil reimbursement for online and in-classroom students. Currently the former
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