Navigating the housing market
Perry’s new football culture
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An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
This Week
BACK TO SCHOOL SECTION
NEWS....................... 6 Gilbert lawmaker warns teen mental health panel on expectations.
FREE ($1 OUTSIDE OF GILBERT) | GilbertSunNews.com
Sunday, July 17, 2022
GPS budget buoyed by additional state funding BY CECILIA CHAN GSN Managing Editor
G
ilbert Public Schools re-adopted its budget for the current fiscal year that raised a starting teacher’s annual salary by an additional 9.6% to $52,000 after receiving $16.3 million in new money from the state. The Governing Board last week approved the revised budget totaling $297 million, a 5.6% increase in the spending plan adopted
Races set for Higley, GPS school boards
June 21 while the state Legislature was at an impasse. A week later, the governor signed a nearly $18 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2023, which included a substantial boost in funding for education. “I promise this is not Groundhog Day,” Finance Director Jackie Mattinen joked at the July 12 special meeting. “Hopefully this is the last adoption.” Other new spends in the revised budget included a $2 per hour increase for hourly staff hired on or before July 1, totaling $6.3 million
and $70,000 to adjust the salaries of 10 administrators to market value, Mattinen said. The budget also increased the mileage stipends for Superintendent Shane McCord and his cabinet, principals, directors, assistant principals, coordinators and deans for a total of $280,000. For instance, the 59 GPS principals and directors will see their mileage stipends increase to $3,000 each from $350 for a total
Modern cowboy
see BUDGET page 5
BY CECILIA CHAN GSN Managing Editor
BUSINESS.............. 16 Mad Hatter’s healthy drinks winning fans. COMMUNITY........................................13 BUSINESS............................................. 16 SPORTS..................................................29 GETOUT.................................................39 CLASSIFIEDS.......................................43
T
wo years after the pandemic hit the country and upended learning, only one of the five incumbents on two school governing boards in Gilbert is running again while 11 newcomers are jumping into the Nov. 8 election. Gilbert Public Schools with 39 campuses has six candidates vying for the three open seats – two with fouryear terms and one with two years. Incumbents Dr. Charles Santa Cruz, elected in 2013,
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Gilbert author-filmmaker Beau Yotty plays Cole and Lisa Barnes is Belle, two bounty hunters who end up in a corrupt town in his new movie “For the Reward.” For Yotty, “cowboy” is as much a state of mind as it is a legendary icon of the Old West, as you’ll see in the story on page 13. (Courtesy Beau Yotty)
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