February 13, 2022 | www.santansun.com
Relentlessly local coverage of Southern Chandler
An edition of the East Valley Tribune
Fiscal doomsday clock ticks for Chandler schools HOWARD FISCHER Capitol Media Services
A financial doomsday clock is ticking for most school districts in Arizona and unless the Legislature acts to stop it by March 1, Chandler Unified faces making $54 million in immediate spending cuts before the end of the current school year. In all, Arizona school districts face $1.2 billion in immediate cuts if the Legislature does not raise or postpone
what’s called the Aggregate Expenditure Limit that dates back to the 1980s, when Arizona voters approved a spending cap for K-12 schools that the Legislature could override with a simple vote. State Superintendent of Public Schools Kathy Hoffman last week called out Republican lawmakers for not trying to develop the two-thirds consensus of lawmakers needed to raise or postpone that cap. “A 16% reduction in budgets will means layoffs amid the already cri-
sis-level teacher shortage,’’ she said. “For students and their parents and guardians, these cuts will mean losing access to academic programs, extracurriculars, high-quality teachers, and even school closures.’’ And Hoffman told lawmakers their voters will notice. “If schools close because they are not authorized to spend money already sitting in their bank accounts, the blame will lie with you, not our public schools,’’ she said.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, told Capitol Media Services the real hang-up is a fear that if lawmakers agree to ignore the cap this year, they effectively will set a precedent that could be used against them in the still-ongoing litigation over whether a 3.5% income tax surcharge on the wealthy approved by voters in 2020 would be allowed to take effect. The Supreme Court last year rejectSee
SPENDING on page 6
City mulls rate hikes, alley pickup’s future BY KEN SAIN Staff Writer
Matt Orlando said he warned his fellow Chandler City Council members to stay away from alleys. They didn’t listen, and that is why Orlando says an estimated 60 people showed up Thursday for a public hearing on proposed rate hikes for the city’s utilities. They were concerned about a proposal to eliminate alley trash pickup
and replace it with curbside pickup in front of homes. Matt Dunbar, the city’s budget manager who has been leading the public discussions, said more people have commented about alleys than any other issue in the proposed rate hikes. Most residents attending the Feb. 3 meeting came away satisfied that if they and their neighbors want to keep it, alley pickup will continue. They’ll just have to pay $1.61 more a month for it. The city plans to increase the
rate that homeowners and businesses pay for water and solid-waste collection starting July 1. Dunbar said even with this increase, the city will still have among the lowest utility rates in the Valley. A day after the alley meeting, Dunbar stood in front of a very different group to give them the same update. They didn’t ask a single question about alleys. Instead, Chandler Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Terri Kimble
told city leaders they seriously need to reconsider their timeline for rolling out the rate hikes. She warned them that businesses and homeowners’ associations plan their annual budgets from January through December, and that a significant rate increase in the middle of the year would be a hardship that could lead to lost jobs. Kimble urged Dunbar to have the See
UTILITIES on page 4
Helping teachers
During last week’s Chandler Unified Governing Board meeting, students, teachers and parents ripped the state’s new “opt-in” policy for sex education and CUSD’s revisions of its own policies made to conform with that state law. (YouTube)
Parents, teachers rip new state, CUSD sex ed
BY KEN SAIN Staff Writer
More than a dozen students, teachers and parents admonished the Chandler Unified School District Governing Board Feb. 9 over its rollout of a new policy that requires parents to opt into any classwork that includes sexuality. A couple of the 16 people who spoke became emotional as they told the board the district went even further than the state law requires, calling it
discriminatory in how it treats LGBTQ+ people. “I personally had to sign a permission slip for my ninth-grader to read ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ of all things,” Krista McKinney said. “Parents also had to sign permission slips for their children to participate in a cooking class about chicken breasts.” The comments came during the time the public is allowed to address the See
SEX ED on page 12
Teachers have helped Basha High School student Jadyn Ocampo learn and now she’s trying to help them pay their bills. She started the Al and Laurie Ocampo Scholarship, in honor of her grandparents, to help them pay down their college loan debt. Read how she’s helped on page 14. (David Minton/Staff Photographer)
F E AT U R E D STO R I E S Catalytic converter thefts soar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .NEWS . . . . . . . . . Page 18 New Chandler store pays homage to 1990s
BUSINESS . . . . . . . Page 28
Chandler man authors mystery novel. . . . . . . . . . . .NEIGHBORS . . . . . Page 36 Bix concerts at Chandler Center for the Arts. . . . .GETOUT . . . . . . . Page 38
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