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Wednesday, May 18, 2022
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Despite Ducey directive, TU and Kyrene get their $8M BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
A
total $8 million that Kyrene and Tempe Union High School districts were not supposed to get because they defied Gov. Doug Ducey by requiring face masks is sitting securely in their bank account after all. But exactly how that came to be remains a mystery. Ducey last August announced he was withholding a total $163
million in federal pandemic relief funds from school districts that required masks at the beginning of the current school year. That money was supposed to split among school districts and charter schools that had received less than $1,800 per student under prior COVID relief programs. The total included $5.2 million Kyrene was slated to receive and $2.8 million Tempe Union was expecting from a pot of money the state got through the American
Unfinished indefinitely
Rescue Plan to boost per-pupil funding. Ducey decreed that the dollars would be available to district and charter schools “following all state laws’’ as of Aug. 27 and contended that schools which required students and staff to wear masks are not in compliance. At the same time, the governor announced that he would use another $10 million from the millions Arizona received under ARP to reimburse certain parents for
up to $7,000 if they wanted to pull their kids out of a school where masks were required. That $7,000 could be used for everything from online tutoring and child care to tuition to attend private and parochial schools as long as the family’s household income fell below 350% of the federal poverty level – about $92,750 a year for a family of four. It is not known how many par-
see DUCEY page 14
City postpones VPC hearing on Canyon Reserve
MARKET SHIFTING
BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
P. RE1 MOUTAIN BIKER
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P
While Desert Foothills Park’s two tennis courts are scheduled to be converted for dual use as pickleball courts as a result of a months-long campaign by two neighbors, the overall condition and future of the park also has come into view. The park was never finished and there is no plan in the city’s five-year Capital Improvement Program to finish the job. Large pieces of the land, seen near the top and the right of this drone photograph, illustrate an unrealized potential for a park that serves hundreds of residents. For the story, see page 3. (Tom Sanfilippo/Inside Out Aerial)
T
he first public step in the Canyon Reserve developers’ effort to get the city approvals they need to begin building the mammoth Canyon Reserve community on the former State Trust Land parcel in Ahwatukee has turned out to be a stumble. Though Reserve 100 LLC/Blandford Homes was scheduled to go before the Ahwatukee Foothills Village Planning Committee next Monday, the virtual hearing was abruptly canceled last week by the city Planning and Development Department. The committee was scheduled to hear a
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