THE VOICE OF THE EAST VALLEY SINCE 1891 AND WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR LOCAL REPORTING
THE SUNDAY
The birds are coming back
Tribune
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Chandler/Tempe Edition
INSIDE
This Week
NEWS........................... 10 Mesa Council eyes scooter controls.
COMMUNITY ......... 11
Her loving tribute to Lehi.
BUSINESS................... 14 His ‘tweener homes’ help buyers, sellers.
FOOD........................... 25 Try this quick and easy treat.
COMMUNITY..................11 BUSINESS........................14 OPINION.........................16 SPORTS ...........................19 GETOUT.......................... 23 CLASSIFIED.................... 27
EAST VALLEY
Hamilton girls rock the court PAGE 19 Sunday, March 3, 2019
Across EV, high school students plead for help BY PAUL MARYNIAK Tribune Executive Editor
E
ast Valley high school students are pleading for help. From Scottsdale to Gilbert and Mesa to Ahwatukee, students in the past three months have appeared before governing boards to plead for more social workers and counselors to protect their classmates – not only from a teen who may be a walking time bomb but also from themselves. “Make this issue treated as the epidemic it is,” implored Gilbert High senior Evan Wood at a recent Gilbert Public Schools Governing Board meeting.
In response to those concerns, the GPS school board last week endorsed a resolution calling on the State Legislature to allocate more money for social workers and counselors. Tempe Union High School District and Mesa Public Schools have adopted resolutions supporting the need for giving students mental and emotional health services, but their governing boards made no specific demands on legislators and said such services are a shared responsibility among all levels of government. Tempe Union went one step further than Mesa by recommending the creation of “student peer safety review committees at each of its seven schools to work with administrators
and “examine the social/emotional and physical safety needs of students and through their efforts, be in a position to make recommendations to strengthen and prioritize our work around school safety and for the social/emotional wellness of all students.” Whether the legislature will respond to the students’ pleas is unclear. It failed to even give a hearing to bills in the House and Senate calling for more counselors even though students converged on the State Capitol last month to explain their plight in person. In the meantime, high school students have spoken at times in anguish over how they not
see COUNSELORS page 3
Waymo self-driving into the East Valley fast lane BY JASON STONE Tribune Contributor
E
xactly how many vehicles are in the fleet is anybody’s guess. The number of jobs it brings to the East Valley is kept hushhush. And where service is going next and when that will happen is still a closely guarded secret. But nobody can dispute the potential impact Waymo self-driving cars could one day have for Chandler, the East Valley and even Arizona as a whole. If you’ve seen one of those vans moving around the East Valley roads, you’re seeing drivers working out the kinks and passengers giving their feedback on how to make the rides better in the future. That select group of testers is rating the performance of the vans through the Early Rider Program, and others have advanced to the new Waymo One program in hundreds of its minivans across Chandler, Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert and Ahwatukee.
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To make way for its growing fleet and overall operations, Waymo recently expanded its Chandler base. (Courtesy of Waymo)
Waymo One is essentially a “traditional” ride-sharing service with a driverless van picking you up. The only catch right now is that a human is sitting in the driver seat to take over in case anything goes wrong. Waymo’s development originally began in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project.
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When Google created its Alphabet company in 2015, it rebranded the self-driving program as Waymo a year later to stand for “a new way forward in mobility.” As part of the rebranding, the company set up shop in Chandler to launch its Early Riders
see WAYMO page 8
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