Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Monday, October 29, 2018
Tags: comics , cartoons , Claytoonz , politics , vanifesto , van , bumper stickers , Image
Friday, October 26, 2018
After relaunching in 2018, The Pathway to Purchase (P2P) program is providing down-payment and closing-cost assistance to prospective homebuyers.
The program is run by the Industrial Development Authorities of the City of Tucson and Pima County. Since relaunching, nearly $25 million in loans have been received. Those funds have provided an average of more than $15,000 in down-payment and closing-cost assistance to new home owners.
The programs achievements were highlighted during a news conference at the office of Mayor Jonathan Rothschild on Friday, Sept. 28. It was announced that the program helped more than 1,000 individuals and families purchase homes in Tucson during the 2016-17 year.
“The Pathway to Purchase program has helped a lot of Tucsonans to achieve their
dream of home ownership,” Mayor Rothschild said, reported in the press release.
The Tucson Industrial Development Authority (TIDA) is a nonprofit corporation authorized to provide lower-cost financing for qualified projects through the issuance of revenue bonds. TIDA gives loans to small businesses and helps finance community development projects when sources of funding may be unavailable.
“As a Board member of the Tucson IDA, I am proud of the success of the Tucson P2P program and all it has done to help the residents of Tucson,” Neal Eckel said, according to the press release.
Pathway to Purchase applicants do not have to be first time home buyers. To learn more about P2P click here.
Tags: housing , program , loans , homebuyers , Image
Thursday, October 25, 2018
Prime example: an op-ed in the Arizona Republic by Rhonda Cagle, chief communications and development officer for Imagine Schools, a national charter chain with over a dozen schools in Arizona. The headline reads, Everything you need to know about Arizona charter schools. Actually, it's not quite everything, and what Cagle states as fact has a whole lot of spin mixed in.
The op-ed begins by saying charter schools have been under scrutiny lately — true fact. Also that scrutiny can be a good way to stimulate dialog — another true fact. And that lots of families choose to send their kids to charters — yet another true fact. It ends by saying we shouldn't be asking whether or not charter schools are better, we should applaud the number of viable educational options presented to students and their parents, both charter and district schools. I agree. Good schools for your children are where you find them, and charters are part of the mix.
All that is fine, pretty much down the middle. But at other times, Cagle's assertions aren't as hard and fast as she makes them out to be.
Tags: Charter schools , Rhonda Cagle , Open enrollment , Public schools , Image
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Garcia was supported with speeches by fellow Democrats like Nina Turner, Rep. Raul Grijalva and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Among speeches covering education and immigration, the speakers emphasized how critical it is that young people turn out to vote.
The mid-day rally was held on McKinley field on the UA mall and was hit with frequent rain showers throughout the event. Democrats still felt "the Bern", and coming together to huddle under umbrellas and campaign posters.
Tags: David Garcia , rally , UA , Young democrats , Bernie Sanders , get out the vote , elections , voting , Slideshow , Image
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Asylum from gang violence and opportunity to work are among the reasons cited in an article by Daniele Volpe and Kirk Semple of the New York Times as to why thousands of migrants from central and South America are making their way north.
“We’re traveling to find a better future for my daughters,” said Fanny Rodríguez, who was with her husband, Edil Moscoso, 26, and their two daughters Daily Edith, 2, and Yarice, 9 months old. “We’re not going because we want fancy things.”With news of the growing caravan headed through Mexico, President Trump has tweeted about sending the military to the southern border of the United States. He also tweeted about the countries of Guatemala, Honduras
She added: “I don’t have to give them luxuries, only what’s necessary — that my daughters don’t lack food, that my daughters don’t lack clothes. Things like that.”
“We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing the massive foreign aid routinely given to them,” Trump said.
Tags: Migration , Immigration , Caravan , Honduras , El Salvador , Guatamala , Mexico , Trump , Border , Wall , New York Times , Image
According to an AZ Republic article which gives off only the faintest odor of skepticism, we're about to get significant improvements in Arizona's charter school oversight and transparency courtesy of all those people who have shielded charters from oversight and transparency in the past: Republican legislators and statewide officeholders. We're supposed to believe the people who have always coddled charters and condemned school districts are going to take charters to task for their corruption and profiteering. And they'll do it after the elections are over, when they have a years-long window before they face voters again.
If you believe that, I've got some beach-front property in Marana you can buy with all the money you get back from Trump's middle class tax cuts.
The Republic article begins with the Arizona Charter Schools Association, the state's biggest cheerleader for charter schools, which is very influential in state Republican circles. After seeing all the bad publicity charters have gotten from recent investigative reporting, Eileen Sigmund, the association's CEO, has decided it's the right time to say, some changes should be made.
In 2016, the ACSA got a $1.6 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation. It's a yearly contribution from the multi-billionaire family which owns Walmart, and the money amounts to half the association's budget. The Foundation gave out $190 million in K-12 education grants that year, the majority of which either went to organizations with the word "charter" in their name or to privatization/"education reform" groups. There's no bigger financial supporter of charter schools in the country than the Walton family. Sigmund isn't about to anger her benefactors. Post elections, she will make it her prime mission to be sure any changes to charter regulations happens around the edges, if they happen at all.
Tags: Charter schools , Profiteering , Arizona Charter Schools Association , Eileen Sigmund , Mark Brnovich , January Contreras , Goldwater Institute , Doug Ducey , Kate Brophy McGee , Image
