Your Weekly guide to keeping busy in the Old Pueblo.

Music and Shows

Beach Boys Tribute. The Beach Boys used to wonder, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?” But now their loyal fanbase can’t help but sometimes wonder, “Wouldn’t it be nice if they were younger?” Enter Surf’s Up, one of the world’s first “true” Beach Boys tribute bands, made up of a couple brothers, their dad and their cousin who have spent the last 25 years working on their sandiest harmonies. 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Sunday, May 6. Gaslight Music Hall, 13005 N. Oracle Road. $30 adults, $29 senior/student/military, $13 children.

Adrián Uribe and Omar Chaparro, Imparables, El Show. You know when you laugh so hard that your stomach hurts and you can’t breathe and it’s actually kind of scary for a minute? Buckle up, because two of Mexico’s favorite comedians are coming to Tucson with a comedy battle, featuring characters that include El Policia de Transito and La Litenciada. There will be wigs, there will be short-sleeved, button-up shirts paired with ties and there will be a lot of laughing until it hurts. 9 p.m. Saturday, May 5. Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. $45 to $95+.

Sounds of Spring. Spring is upon us (if you didn’t notice based on the way it’s no longer borderline comfortable to wear a sweater outside), and what sounds more like spring than the sweet sound of a girls’ chorus? That’s right! Nothing! The more than 200 young women in the Tucson Girls Chorus, directed by Marcela Molina, will perform everything from traditional seasonal music to contemporary and folk pieces. 3:30 p.m. Sunday, May 6. Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St. $15 to $18.

Tucson Folk Festival. Tucsonans, it’s time to get folked up. Here are just some of the bands who will be playing at this year’s festival: Pokey LaFarge (national headliner), Greg & Randal Morton Band & Special Guests (local headliner), Peter Alsop (children’s show headliner), Kay Miracle, Minute2Minute, Igor, Odaiko Sonora, The Cat Wranglers, Bobby Rondstadt and Baba Marimba. And that’s just a little slice of this deliciously acoustic pie. It’s taking place at several different venues downtown, so it’s kind of like Tucson’s own little SXSW. Noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, May 5. 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, May 6. Historic Downtown Tucson. Free.

Art and Museums

Free First Thursdays at the Tucson Museum of Art. Happy First Thursday! TMA has an awesome lineup of events celebrating members of our community’s immigrant and refugee population along with their artistic and cultural contributions. They’ll be displaying Sanctuary Benches developed in tandem with local schools and other organizations, as well as a project documenting the stories of Tucson refugees, “Dismantling Fear: Voices of Tucson’s Refugee Community.” Artists from Syria, Bulgaria and Morocco will play live music, and museums exhibition tours will be offered in Spanish and Arabic. 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, May 3. Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block. Free.

Although a number of local school districts announced they would reopen tomorrow, because lawmakers have yet to vote on a budget that increases education funding, districts reversed their decisions Wednesday afternoon.

As many schools across the state continue into their second week of teacher walkouts, leadership with Arizona Education United put out a video on Facebook yesterday saying that while they oppose the budget proposal, it’s the best they’re going to get right now, and teachers should return to their schools though the fight for better school funding shall continue.

The caveat was that educators would only return to school if the budget passed, and as of late Wednesday afternoon, it was still on the House floor.

“We need to continue our dedication to this fight, and I can tell you right now, my personal dedication to this fight has never been greater,” AEU organizer Noah Karvelis said in the Tuesday video. “And we will continue to fight until we have $1.1 billion restored and we end the education crisis.”

The Pima County districts that announced reopening in anticipation of an agreement that has yet to come included Amphi Public Schools, Marana Unified School District and Catalina Foothills Unified School District.

Tucson Unified School District hasn’t said when schools will reopen, and Sunnyside Unified School District is closed the rest of the week.

MUSD said in a statement that they’re talking with the Department of Education about what options are available to avoid adding days to the end of the school year.

Amphi Public Schools said the district will need to make up instructional time, but that potential options to minimize the impact to families is being explored. A few options they are looking at is extending existing school days by a few minutes each and cancelling scheduled early-out days.


Vail Unified School District reopened on Tuesday, with a teacher attendance rate of 77 percent.

“I would like to publicly thank all of our teachers—those who are in their classrooms today and those who are not. It was a difficult decision for many of them,” Superintendent Calvin Baker wrote in a letter to parents.

The bill proposal on the house floor today includes a $371 million restoration to school funding, not the $1.1 billion the Red for Ed movement has been asking for to return education funding to pre-recession levels.

That annual funding, increasing incrementally to $371 million over five years, will fund things such as increasing pay for classified and support staff, textbooks, curriculum, technology and school buses. How that money is spent will be up to individual districts and charter schools.

The proposal also includes 20 percent teacher raises by 2020, $53 million for maintaining school facilities and $88 million cash funding for five new school buildings for districts that have been waiting for money to rebuild or expand school buildings. There’s also funding for state universities, Maricopa and Pima Joint Technical Education District, and behavioral health specialists in districts and charter schools.

Christine Thompson, president and CEO of the education advocacy group Expect More Arizona, says the bill is a good start though more needs to be done to find revenue sources that support teachers and support staff, maintain school infrastructure and provide students with wrap around services.

“We need long-term investment, and we need support,” she said. “A sleeping giant has been awakened, and we need to make sure everyone is paying attention as we go into an election cycle.”

The state plans to pay for the increased education funding through a number of measures, the bulk of which would come from projected increases in state revenue.

One way that some Red for Ed supporters are aiming to find another revenue source to completely restore education funding is through a ballot initiative called the Invest in Education Act.

If the initiative wins the uphill battle of gathering 150,642 signatures by the July 5 deadline, voters could decide whether to raise income taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Arizonans to fund education. As reported in the Arizona Republic, leaders of the initiative expect it to provide $690 million in new education funding.

This story was updated at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

The local Educators Support Fund is accepting donations to help Tucson area educators who have taken a financial hit during the walkout.

"We opened Tuesday at noon," said Cheryl Cage, one of five people who created the fund. "As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, we've already collected over $6,000."

The site allows educators to submit requests for funds up to $500. Though many educators were able to use personal leave or sick leave to cover the missed days, others lost pay. "A number of requests have come in from people asking for something like $120 to cover utility bills," Cage said. "The requests have been modest and reasonable."

The fund defines "educator" as anyone who should be included in the pay raise demands of Arizona teachers. Requests will be considered from educators working in the Marana, TUSD, Amphitheater, Flowing Wells, Catalina Foothills, Tanque Verde, Sunnyside and Vail school districts.

The sponsors of the site include Cage, a long-time community activist, as well as: Terry Goddard, former Attorney General; Joel Feinman, Pima County Public Defender; Luci Messing, past Tucson Education Association president; and Robin Hiller, founder and executive director of Voices for Education. Hiller's organization is a 501c(3), which allows it to collect and distribute the funds.

According to Cage, “Our educators make significant financial sacrifices for our community. Through our financial support we hope to show them that we have their backs and are willing to sacrifice along with them."

Anyone wishing to contribute or request funds should go to the website, educatorssupportfund.com.

Two articles put UA's Freedom School back in the news, directly and indirectly.

First story: At a time when Ducey's proposed budget is squeezing blood from every funding turnip it can find, the governor managed to find a million dollars to give to the Koch-backed libertarian outpost at University of Arizona. It includes $100,000 to develop a "civics and constitutionalism curriculum for K-12 and postsecondary education institutions."

Second story: An Associated Press story on the Star's front page discusses how the Koch brothers give money to Virginia's George Mason University to hire professors, then demand a say in who is hired and fired. Not covered in the story is a similar arrangement at UA's "Freedom School."

The Ducey budget.

Ducey and Republican legislative leaders have been scrambling to pull together a budget with enough money to fund a 9 percent salary increase for teachers. That means, among other things, cutting $35 million from hospitals, cutting $52 million from Medicaid prescription costs, taking $20 million from the state's settlement with Volkswagen and adding $16.7 million to property taxes in Tucson.

But with all the cuts, Ducey found $2 million to give to the Koch-backed "Freedom Schools" at UA and ASU, a million dollars each. The current budget is the first one with a line item for the Koch-backed "Freedom Schools." This proposed budget will be the second.

Call the $2 million what it is: a taxpayer funded gift to the universities' libertarian centers in exchange for millions of dollars from the Koch donor network to help fund Ducey's reelection efforts. In 2014, based on the promise that Ducey would be Arizona's Great Right Hope, the Koch brothers and their affiliates spent millions on his first gubernatorial campaign. The reported total ranged from $1.5 million to $5 million depending on how much dark money spent on the campaign came from the Koch network.

Since then, Ducey has proven himself to be the real deal. He's cut taxes every year and pushed through an expansion of private school vouchers. In 2017, he told the millionaires and billionaires gathered at the Koch Donor Summit, "I needed the power of the network" to push the voucher expansion to cover all K-12 students through the legislature. Ducey has every reason to expect to receive a hefty chunk of the $400 million the Koch network plans to spend on the 2018 elections.

Of the million dollars going to UA's "Freedom School"—the "Freedom School" is actually two entities, the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom and the Department of Political Economy & Moral Science—$100,000 is earmarked to develop a "civics and constitutionalism curriculum for K-12 and postsecondary education institutions." That means taxpayers are funding the expansion of the course, Phil 101: Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship, which is currently being taught in four local school districts as well as a number of charter and private schools. Creation of the course was funded by a $3 million grant to the Freedom Center from the John Templeton Foundation. Using the grant, David Schmidtz, founding director of the Freedom Center, created the course out of whole cloth. He and associates wrote the curriculum, wrote and self-published the textbook and trained the high school teachers in summer seminars. Schmidtz is listed as the teacher of record for the high school courses.

If the budget being considered by the legislature passes, taxpayers will pick up the tab for maintaining and expanding the spread of libertarian-centered courses into public high schools around the state.

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I am a 4-year-old girl who is searching for the purr-fect home! I am a friendly girl who enjoys when people talk to me! I love chin scratches and will thank you with purrs.

In the past I have done well with other cats and older kids. Come to HSSA Main Campus at 635 W. Roger Rd. to meet me. Have questions? Give an adoptions counselor a call at 520-327-6088, ext. 173.

Many Meows,
Marcia (853643)