Category: All Stories

If one state legislator has his way most Arizona students at public universities will be dishing out more of their own money to get an education.

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, introduced a bill last week that would require all Arizona residents at public universities prove that they spent $2,000 annually of their own cash regardless the amount of grants or other funding they receive to cover tuition costs.

Why? “I don’t think we should be giving away college degrees totally free,” Kavanagh said.

H.B. 2675 requires every student personally contribute $2,000 to tuition unless they are an NCAA student-athlete or solely merit-based academic scholar. His bill targets those who receive need-based funding help.

Arizona Board of Regents statistics show almost one-third of all undergraduate students pay less than $2,000 a year for tuition through scholarships, grants, and waivers—so they could potentially find their scholarships on the chopping block.

More than 30,376 in-state students pay less than $2,000 a year for their tuition, and Kavanagh wants to change the formula so student who get scholarships for reasons other than just merit, would have to foot a $2,000 tuition bill.

Could 50,000 Arizona schoolchildren be going without lunch?

That’s the fear some people are expressing if the legislature passes and the governor signs a bill under consideration.

SB 1061, sponsored by Sen. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa, waives a mandate that kindergarten through eighth grade public school districts participate in the National School Lunch Program, a federal program that provides free and reduced-price lunches to children through cash subsidies.

While many Republican legislators laud the bill, saying it promotes “local control,” the bill baffles nutritionists and educators who say it attacks a federal program that provided Arizona more than $340 million in cash for lunches last year.

The program, called the “Healthy Hunger Kids Act,” was unveiled in detail Wednesday by First Lady Michelle Obama, detailing the increases of fruit, whole grain, and cut in sodium and trans fat—a $3.2 billion program to be implemented over the next five years.

School officials like Nutrition Director Karen Johnson of Yuma Elementary School District, is baffled as to why this bill is even necessary, calling the National School Lunch Program “a federal program that works.”

“He’s trying to plug a leak in a dam that’s not leaking. There’s no leak here,” Johnson said. Johnson fears this bill could leave some kids, even a small number, with no way to pay for or receive a lunch.

“To me, if one school drops off the program, and if there’s one child that’s going to go hungry that day, we’ve done an injustice to that student,” Johnson said. “I know people don’t think that will happen, but it could happen. And to me, “could” is something that I have to pay attention to.”

Stacey Morley, director of policy development and government relations with the Arizona Department of Education, believes public outrage would likely keep food on the plates of Arizona’s poorest.

While millions of people are getting ready to enjoy pecan pies for Thanksgiving, Sahuarita farmer Richard Walden and his crews at Farmers Investment Co. are getting ready for the upcoming holiday by preparing for their annual pecan harvest.

Walden, 69, is the president of the company his father Keith started in 1937 in California, which became Farmers Investment Co. FICO, which includes the Green Valley Pecan Co. and Santa Cruz Valley Organic Farms, is now the largest pecan grower/processor and the largest certified organic grower/processor of pecans in the world.

 

[caption id="attachment_85" align="alignleft" width="864"]Horses from Old Tombstone Tours stand on top of their designated sandbox to urinate. The horses are taken to the spot to relieve themselves twice daily. (Photo by Robert Alcaraz/ASNS)[/caption]Like tourists, horses are common on Tombstone’s streets.

And most of them – horses and tourists – are properly potty trained.

Tom Clark, an employee of Old Tombstone Tours, a stagecoach business that carries tourists and educates them about the town’s history, said his company has taught its horses how to urinate in only one place, and it wasn’t a difficult process.

“They know when to go,” said Clark, who has worked for the tour firm nearly a decade. “We take them down to the sandbox twice every day, usually around noon and 3 in the afternoon.”