Tags: DACA , dreamers , Tucson , City Hall , Here to stay , Martha McSally
Tags: Ally Miller , Pima County Board of Supervisors , Tucsonans Against Racism Protest and Rally , Slideshow
The TUSD Superintendent’s job is still at risk, although discussion of it was absent from Tuesday night’s board meeting.
Tags: prop 123 , proposition 123 , debate , tucson events , no to prop 123 , let's vote prop 123
"The purpose of these laws is to assist all workers in addressing their own health and safety needs and the health and safety needs of their families by requiring employers to provide a minimum amount of earned sick time, including time for the care of family members. Under Arizona Revised Statutes Section 23-364(I), the City of Tucson has authority to prescribe employee benefits related to earned sick time within the boundaries of Tucson."
Tags: city of tucson , arizona restaurant association , paid sick leave , benefits , mandatory , study session , city coucil , restaurant workers
“After a thorough review of materials from TUSD’s culturally relevant courses, I find that the district has failed to meet several provisions of the 2012 Settlement Agreement settlement and is once again in clear violation of A.R.S. §15-112. Furthermore, I am deeply concerned by the fact that the noncompliance appears to extend beyond classes taught from the Mexican American perspective and now also includes classes taught from the African American perspective.
“ADE staff has worked tirelessly to provide guidance and feedback as quickly as possible throughout the process so that district officials would have the resources needed to keep all culturally relevant courses in compliance with the law. This process has been made challenging by the fact that the district has failed to fully respond to several requests for information and has been inconsistent in its application of materials that have been provided.
“In issuing this finding before classes resume, I am hopeful that the district will take immediate action to comply with the law.”
The ongoing cultural war between Tucson and Phoenix has been taken from the streets to the failing web portal known as Yahoo!. The idea of having this conversation with a Phoenician makes the hair on the back of my neck stand. No one ever wins the discussion, but we do it anyway.
Specialty Cuisine: Tucson is as close as you’ll get to really authentic Mexican food north of the border. The Mexican here isn’t Southwestern; it’s Sonoran. And it’s often dirt cheap. Try Paco’s, El Sur, El Güero Canelo, BK’s, or Poco & Mom’s. Try Sonoran hot dogs, a local specialty: They’re wrapped in mesquite-smoked bacon, grilled, and topped with beans, onions, tomatoes, and condiments ranging from mayonnaise to Jalapeño salsa. Olé!She talks about the modern streetcar, San Xavier, Sonoran dogs and UA sports, of course. I would have mistaken her as a Tucsonan if I didn't know she was based out of the Emerald City. Honestly, she makes good arguments for both sides, and paints a pretty picture for the red headed step sister of the north.
Must-Do Nightlife: Bar-hopping along the Fourth Avenue Historic Shopping District (also home to an eclectic collection of locally owned shops and restaurants) is a time-honored tradition. Grab an “adult snowcone” at Che’s Lounge, pay homage to America’s largest tiki head at The Hut, or see a drag show at IBT’s. If nerd chic is your thing, head to Sky Bar: solar powered by day and an astronomy-themed bar by night, complete with telescopes.Obviously, the Old Pueblo layeth the smacketh-down on Phoenix by taking 87% of the votes since Wednesday. Granted, there has been 1078 votes since writing this. We take our victories where we can get them.
Tags: Tucson vs Phoenix , Phoenix is alright , Tucson is cool , why can't we be friends? , What about Bisbee , bisbee is pretty chill , i hear fuck scottsdale is a thing , has anyone heard from
I truly love the comments on my posts, including the ones from people who disagree with me. I often read them multiple times. Lots to learn from both sides of the argument. That being said, some people without much to say figure they're making a point by commenting about my failings rather than the issue at hand. Why did you write a post about someone else's post? Run out of things to say? All you do is trash BASIS. Don't you have anything better to do?
Then there are those commenters who figure it's really gonna hurt if they call me a lousy journalist, and, furthermore, The Weekly is really going downhill by letting this miserable excuse for a journalist write on its website.
Here's the thing. I'm not a journalist. Don't pretend to be. I'm a blogger. I write on a blog. There's not a clear, bright line between journalism and blogging, but they're two distinct forms, with some overlap. Here's how I see the basic difference.
Someone once said, "Journalism is the first rough draft of history." Well, blogging is the first rough draft of journalism.
What good journalists tend to do is gather a big stack of information on a subject they're writing about — pulling together background, attending events, doing interviews, that sort of thing — then figure out how to pare all that material down to a story of reasonable length that captures the subject as well as they can. Tomorrow, things may change, but the story is supposed to give the reader an honest look at what's happening on a given issue at a given moment.
What a blogger like me usually does is take one or two pieces of the data journalists find in their pile of information and write about it. There's no attempt to cover the topic thoroughly like a journalist does, though sometimes that happens. It's me saying, "Hmm, this looks interesting to me, you may be interested too," or "You may not have thought of this topic this way. Let me explain how I see it."
PHOENIX — Sen. Steve Pierce (R-Prescott) stood up on the Senate floor last week and attempted to get $4.2 million for the University of Arizona to start a veterinary program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Shortly after he finished talking, the nay votes overwhelmed the yeas, and the amendment was voted down.
In his office, Rep. Ethan Orr (R-Tucson) who has his two University of Arizona diplomas hanging behind his desk, remains on a mission. Early in the week Orr, a former associate professor at the university, thought he could get the funding from the House, despite the lack of success of veterinary appropriations in the Senate. But later this week, the House only agreed to give the university $3.5 million for Cooperative Extension support. Without the support of the House and Senate, Orr will have to come up with some other way to squeeze the money he wants to create the University of Arizona’s first veterinary school and surgical program — before the budget is finalized.
But the legislative appropriations game is only part of a bigger conversation surrounding the proposed veterinary program — one between two veterinarians, Dr. Shane Burgess, the dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Dr. Wayne Anderson, of the Arrow Service Groups of Animal Hospitals, a co-op of veterinary hospitals in the Phoenix area.
Anderson says he has letters from over 30 private practices in the state, all of which state that they don’t support a veterinary school program for the university. But if you talk to Burgess (or Orr, or any other supporter of the program) they’ll tell you that the University of Arizona, as a land-grant university, has a responsibility to its citizens to create this program.
“We take this very seriously in my college; our job is to do whatever we can to benefit the state,” Burgess said. “My job is to do whatever I can to improve the state’s economy by improving the number of jobs, by improving the incomes of the private businesses, and by making our state a better place to live for everybody.” In Burgess’ view, that means giving Arizona students a better opportunity to become veterinarians — but with rising costs in tuition throughout the country, it also means creating a program that would minimize costs.
Currently, a program called the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education allows for Arizona students to pay in-state tuition to out of state schools in return of the students spending at least four years working in Arizona after they graduate.
“Even with that, a lot of veterinarians I know still leave with like a hundred grand in debt after veterinary school,” said Chris Cromwell said, a junior who is a veterinary sciences student at the University of Arizona. “Really, there in no cheap option for veterinary students in general, but especially veterinary students in Arizona.”
Most of the veterinary schools in the country are state schools and typically admit more in-state students than out of state students, which doesn’t leave much room for Arizona students like Cromwell.
To help Arizona students, Burgess has two ideas. One is to streamline the program, providing six different entry points into the program. The other is to use the resources that the university already has, including a distributive education model that would place students in clinics throughout the state.