No, the buzzing you hear isn't the iPhone in your pocket. It's a honey bee—and the impact it has on pollinating the crops you eat is worth its slightly obnoxious presence.

The importance of bees to our ecosystems and to the development of food we eat is no secret, but the preservation of the insects gained an increase in support recently since six species of yellow-faced bees joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Endangered Species List. The Southern Arizona Work Space will be hosting a class, The Basics of Beekeeping, on Saturday, March 11 from 1-3 p.m. to teach people the craft of beekeeping or what to do if they find a swarm or hive in their own backyards. Admission is $20. As a sweet incentive, there will also be a honey tasting.

Beekeeping may be becoming a lost art—and an important one too. If anyone needs more convincing of why saving honey bees is important, check out these fun facts according to RVC Outdoor Destinations:

-Their tiny wings can flap up to 200 times a second, allowing them to buzz around up to 15 mph.

- Much like a last call might look like in a downtown club, communication takes form in a frantic "dance" called a "waggle."

- Bees can recognize a human face. So yes, they can actually see your terrified expression as you run away squealing.

If you still need encouragement to push aside your fears, just look up #savethebees on Twitter and read what much funnier people have to say about the issue.

In the wake of a divided governing board driving out Superintendent H.T. Sanchez, the Tucson Unified School District is now celebrating Kindness Week.

The TUSD board spent weeks discussing the fate of then-superintendent H.T. Sánchez before Sanchez worked out a deal to resign. Many will miss him, including Stefanie Boe, TUSD’s communications director. And while district employees adjust, they’re making an extra effort to stay positive.

“We are a kind community, and we’re here for each other,” she said. “We’re all in it together, and we make up the ‘unified’ in ‘Tucson Unified.’”

Bearing the tagline “find the kind,” the communication team will go to the schools and look for stories of kindness. They’ll be documenting these stories and buddy benches and murals on Facebook Live.

“People are doing these things already, but we just want to go find the kind,” Boe said.

The district usually does kindness week in May but decided the added focus on goodwill would be good for the district.

TUSD families and employees can share their school’s kindness stories by emailing [email protected] or posting on the district’s Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #FindTheKind.

The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board doesn’t seem to have any idea who will replace the superintendent, whose resignation was accepted at the Feb. 28 meeting in a 3-2 vote.

The board hasn’t had a chance to discuss the matter, said the newest board member Rachael Sedgwick. She added that they’ll probably hire an interim first, and they’re collecting names of potential candidates.

“People have been reaching out, letting me know they’re interested, and they know of other people who are interested or qualified,” she said. She wouldn’t specify who these people were or what fields they’re in, only that they’re very familiar with TUSD.


The now former-superintendent H.T. Sánchez’s job was in question ever since a last-minute agenda item was added to the regular Feb. 14 meeting by Sedgwick and backed by Board Member Mark Stegeman. Community members filled the Duffy Community Center for three consecutive Tuesdays, voicing their concerns for and against Sánchez, with notably more people speaking in his support.

Sedgwick said they’re looking for someone who will focus on “instruction,” which she clarified to mean raising student enrollment, student achievement levels and the percentage of TUSD funds spent on the classroom.

The qualifications she’s looking for in a candidate includes being a “superstar” and “fabulous instructional leader,” Sedgwick said, as well as a strong relationship with the business community, the faith-based community, the legislature and community leaders.

Frequent traveling to the Arizona legislature in Phoenix was one of the things Sedgwick cited, during a Feb. 15 interview with the Tucson Weekly, as being an issue she had with Sánchez.

Before he was sent packing, Sánchez seemed to foster those relationships Sedgwick finds important. Among his supporters were Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, who sent the board an email in support of Sánchez prior to the resignation, and Mike Varney, CEO and president of the Tucson Metro Chamber, who spoke at the Feb. 21 board meeting.

Arizona's ongoing tuition tax credit scam was well documented back in 2009 courtesy of some terrific investigative reporting, and it continues to come up in our media now and again. Nothing has changed—what else is new in Arizona?—but at least it's out in the open for anyone who wants to read about it. It's nice to see this Oldie But Goodie getting some national coverage in a New York Times story, DeVos and Tax Credit Vouchers: Arizona Shows What Can Go Wrong. The story's poster child for tax credit profiteering is our own state Senate President Steve Yarbrough.

The Times story begins, "Steve Yarbrough is one of the most powerful men in Arizona." Then it talks about our backdoor voucher program, tuition tax credits, where people give money to School Tuition Organizations and get all of it back when they pay their taxes, meaning their "donation" costs them nothing. The taxpayer picks up the tab, since 100 percent of that money otherwise would have gone into the state coffers. The STOs use most of the money to pay for students' private school tuitions. It can pay for poor kids to go to private schools, but the money can also be used to pay full tuition for millionaires' sons and daughters to attend the most exclusive, expensive private schools in the state. The more you know about this program, the worse it gets.

The dirty secret hidden inside the voucher plan, the Ka-ching! that puts a twinkle in Sen. Yarbrough's eye, is that ten percent of the tuition tax credit money goes to pay the STO's overhead. If your STO pulls in, say, $18 million, like Yarbrough's Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization did in 2014, the most recent year with an online tax form from the STO, that means $1.8 million can be used to pay for the expense of collecting money from donors and handing it out to schools. That's good money if you can get it. Yarbrough gets a $125,000 salary out of the deal. But as the Times piece points out, that's only part of his total take. He owns HY Processing which does the bookkeeping/tech work for the STO, for which it makes $636,000 a year. Yarbrough owns the building that houses the STO, which brings him $52,000 in rent. The STO paid for his car.

I imagine Yarbrough smiles all the way to the bank when he's on his way to the State Capitol to do "the people's work"—with Steve Yarbrough being Steve's favorite "people."

As most everyone knows by now, H.T. Sanchez resigned as TUSD superintendent Tuesday. You can read the official Separation and Release Agreement here. It's a clean break agreement. No one is admitting guilt on either side. Members of the board can't speak badly about Sanchez, and Sanchez can't speak badly about the board. If anyone violates this "non-disparagement" agreement, that person can be sued and, if found guilty, is responsible for paying the damages. That should effectively button lips on both sides. Sanchez gets $200,000 for leaving, which I figure is more-or-less half of what he would get in salary if he stayed until his contract was up.

People in the community will continue to talk about Sanchez, I'm sure, but TUSD is saying, "Let's move on." I agree.

What comes next? Unless the board majority has a Plan B with someone already in mind as the next superintendent, the next step is up in the air. So, a few thoughts.

First, I'm folding my hands and praying a secular prayer that the board hires a competent, effective superintendent with as little fussing and fighting as possible. I'm not sure how many great potential superintendents are job hunting right now, but I imagine a number of applicants for the job will be reasonably capable. A great superintendent can move a district forward, usually by small steps, not by leaps and bounds. A bad superintendent can be a drag on the district and bring it down a few notches. A competent, caretaker superintendent can keep things running with a modicum of efficiency and, with a bit of luck, lower the hysteria level just a little. I'll add that I hope the new superintendent is both confident and cautious. People will be pushing and pulling the Supe from all directions, and the best response, at least in the near future, is to plot a steady course instead of bending with whatever wind is strongest.

Arizona's Republican legislators are pushing a vouchers-on-steroids-for-everyone bill. Betsy DeVos, Trump's new Secretary of Education, loves vouchers and private schools far more than public schools. A bill being pushed in Congress would change the way the Feds give money to the states, requiring that the money go to students attending private schools as well as public schools.

And yet, the latest research indicates that voucher students do worse than similar students who stay in public schools, according to a recent article in the New York Times.

Yeah, I know, it's the New York Times, and what right-thinking, pro-privatization School Choice advocate listens to a paper Trump assures us is spouting Fake News and is an Enemy of the People?

OK then, you might want to listen to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative, pro-school choice think tank, whose research is discussed in the NY Times article. The institute published a study in July, 2016, about Ohio's voucher program, which began in 2005. The results for the voucher students weren't good.

The students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools. The study finds negative effects that are greater in math than in English language arts. Such impacts also appear to persist over time, suggesting that the results are not driven simply by the setbacks that typically accompany any change of school.

The authors were hoping for a different result, they wrote, but they showed themselves to be honest researchers.

Let us acknowledge that we did not expect—or, frankly, wish—to see these negative effects for voucher participants; but it’s important to report honestly on what the analysis showed and at least speculate on what may be causing these results.

In the same spirit of honesty, I need to add one positive the researchers pulled from their data: the achievement of students who could have chosen to use the vouchers but stayed in public schools actually improved. The authors drew the conclusion that the public schools improved their instruction out of concern that, otherwise, too many students might leave for private schools. If that finding is confirmed elsewhere — and if it's an actual increase in student learning and not just a result of more intense teaching to the standardized tests — it's something educators should look at more carefully.

The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board announced last night they were once again postponing the agenda item concerning Superintendent H.T. Sánchez’s job.

The Duffy Community Center was so packed that overflow crowds had to wait outside. For over three hours, the board and superintendent were in executive session. At about 7:45 p.m., Sánchez somberly took his seat with the board and was met by loud applause from the audience. But not everyone was clapping.

For an hour, community members spoke for and against Sánchez with either raised-voice rancor or grateful tears on topics such as superintendent turnover rates, student-enrollment numbers, Prop 301 spending, childhood bullying, dropout rates, race and unsuccessful desegregation measures.

Several people spoke in Spanish with an English translator, recounting times Sánchez had personally helped their children.

Cassandra Becerra, a mother of TUSD students, is one of Sánchez’s supporters. While waiting for the meeting to start, she told the Tucson Weekly she’s seen the superintendent in the schools and fighting for the good of the district.

“I strongly believe he’s here because he cares about this district,” she said, holding a sign with a red, white and blue drawing of Sánchez, copying the iconic “hope” poster representing Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.

At the second TUSD board meeting in as many weeks, the board punted on the topic of keeping or firing Superintendent Sanchez. Last week, on Feb. 14, the action item was removed from the board's agenda. On Tuesday, Feb. 21, it was the meeting's sole agenda item. After an executive session which ran hours longer than scheduled, the board members walked into the standing-room-only meeting room, listened to members of the audience speak out for and against Sanchez, then told the audience the item had been tabled. See y'all next week!

None of us regular folks know exactly why a vote on Sanchez's future was delayed. The decision was made in executive session, and the board members are supposed to keep those sessions confidential. So the next step is anyone's guess. Sanchez may yet be fired; he may be allowed to remain with conditions; or the board may simply vote against the call to get rid of him and be done with it. I have a feeling the board doesn't know much more about the outcome than the rest of us.

So, nothing happened. But I observed something and drew a conclusion which may or may not be accurate. What I observed was, there's not a whole lot of passionate community support for the "Fire Sanchez" movement. There are probably a significant number of people in the community who are dissatisfied with his performance as superintendent, people who wouldn't be unhappy to see him go, but if the meeting is any indication, the core group of Sanchez haters, the people with fire in their bellies, is reasonably small.

Full disclosure: I think Sanchez should stick around at least until his contract runs out in 2018, so that may color my subjective, anecdotal observations. I claim no scientific rigor here. That being said, I watched carefully, and this is what I observed. If I'm wrong, I'm sure others will let me know.

In a recent tweet, Trump called the press "the enemy of the American people." Days earlier, though he didn't use the phrase, he made a similar accusation about our courts when they ruled against his Muslim ban. I'm sure Trump had no idea he was quoting the title of a 19th century play, An Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen, in his tweet, nor could he know how ironic the play's title is or how clearly it reveals his intentions. The "enemy" in the play is a man who dared speak truth to power. Power, as it often does, did everything it could to suppress the truth.

We're not very familiar with Ibsen these days, but we know Steven Spielberg, and most of us have seen Jaws. The opening of the movie is based loosely on Ibsen's play.

Late one night in Spielberg's little tourist beach town, we see a swimmer killed by a shark. When the coroner confirms to the police chief that it was a shark attack, the chief decides to close the beaches until they're safe. The mayor disagrees. It's the beginning of the summer tourist season, he says, and closing the beaches would be disastrous for the town's economy. The mayor convinces the coroner to change the cause of death, to say the swimmer was caught in the blades of a boat's propeller — in other words, to lie. The mayor forbids the police chief from closing the beaches. It takes two more shark attacks before the mayor acknowledges that the police chief was right and closes the beaches, which is when the hunt for the Great White begins.

Ibsen's original Enemy of the People has a similar setup. A small town's economy is based around its health baths. A local doctor discovers that the water is contaminated and writes an article which he submits to the editor of the local paper. The editor is eager to print it, both to report the problems with the baths and to use it as a way to expose the corruption running rampant in the town's government. But the mayor intervenes. He convinces the editor that printing the truth would be bad for the town, so the editor pulls the doctor's article. In its place, he runs a statement by the mayor praising the quality of the baths.

A special TUSD Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 21, with only one agenda item: a discussion of the possible firing of Superintendent H.T. Sanchez and General Counsel Todd Jaeger. It's a bit more complicated than that—you can read the agenda here—but that's the gist of it.

The same item was on the February 14 agenda, submitted at the last minute by newly elected board member Rachael Sedgwick, but it was pulled before it was discussed in the open meeting. On Feb. 21, it is the agenda, period, unless other items are submitted. And Mark Stegeman has joined Rachael Sedgwick in requesting it.

After the last board meeting, I wrote that I wasn't sure if Sedgwick put in the earlier item on her own, but I suspected she did. This time, however, it's clear she has Stegeman with her, an experienced, thoughtful, strategic board member who knows how to dot his "i's" and cross his "t's." I expect the item will be discussed and voted on.

We'll see what happens. We could get a drip, drip, drip of information over the next few days, or not. I certainly wouldn't lay odds that Sanchez will have his job after the meeting; then again, I'm not a betting man. But you never know. These things have a habit of taking odd, unpredictable turns.

Stay tuned. I know I will.