MPS spruces up / P. 3
Fool-ish treat / P. 28
An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
This Week
NEWS ..................... 10 Ducey sounds alarm on teen suicides.
FREE ($1 OUTSIDE THE EAST VALLEY) | TheMesaTribune.com
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Children, parents rip MPS’ reopening plan BY PAUL MARYNIAK Tribune Executive Editor
C
hildren are scheduled to return to Mesa Public Schools classrooms in a truncated fashion tomorrow and judging by last Tuesday’s Governing Board meeting, not many people are happy with that. In the board’s �irst in-person meeting in six months, 21 parents
– some with tears of rage and others with tears of frustration – and children lambasted the district for not opening campuses �ive days a week. The �ive teachers who addressed the board spoke against opening campuses at all, contending that it was not only unsafe but also created an impossible work schedule as they tried teaching kids online and in person simul-
taneously. Even board members squabbled as Marcie Hutchinson argued it was too early to reopen and her colleagues �ired back that if the district waits for perfect COVID-19 metrics, classrooms will be steeped in dust. Students have been divided into two alphabetically arranged groups, with the A group on campuses Mondays and Thursdays
and the B group on Tuesdays and Fridays. The rest of the time, they’ll do what they’ve been doing since mid-March – learning online at home. The decision to partially reopen schools is based on three benchmarks for COVID-19 transmission the county Public Health Department advises districts to follow in
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COMMUNITY ......... 13 Mesa kids recast 'Romeo & Juliet' as western.
OPINION ............... 18 Starbucks partners with foodrecovery nonprofit.
SPORTS ................ 20 Schools see some normalcy on gridiron. COMMUNITY ............................... 13 BUSINESS ..................................... 15 OPINION ....................................... 18 SPORTS ...................................... 20 GETOUT...................................... 24 PUZZLES ...................................... 28 CLASSIFIED ................................. 29 Zone 2
At left, Brittny Smith became the first parent to address the Mesa Public Schools Governing Board in person since March last Tuesday and she led off a parade of parents who pleaded for a full five-day in-classroom reopening. In the middle are two of the students who made the same plea while at right, Ronda Doolan said she and her family are terminating their 30-year relationship with MPS because of their disgust with the district's refusal to fully reopen campuses (YouTube)
E. Mesa �ire station project beginning soon BY JIM WALSH Tribune Staff Writer
T
he generosity of Mesa voters in 2018 will start paying off soon in a series of quality-of-life-oriented civic improvements, including a desperately-needed �ire station in southeast Mesa and a plaza near the ASU @Mesa City Center project. Piece by piece, the wide-ranging $196-million bond issue is gradually being executed,
with the �irst wave of improvements scheduled for completion next year. Southeast Mesa residents at the fringe of city services became the �irst bene�iciaries when the Mesa City Council on Aug. 31 approved the construction of a $5.8 million �ire station in Eastmark, near Ray and Ellsworth roads and northeast of Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. While Station 221 is expected to vastly improve response times to a rapidly growing
part of Mesa, the plaza is billed as focal point for special events downtown that are centered around the new ASU campus. But two expensive and signi�icant project – a long-awaited northeast Mesa police and �ire facility and a southeast Mesa library – are years away from opening and will not be built until the city can afford to staff them. Mesa Fire Chief Mary Cameli said Station
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