Pop Quiz: Education is up for a vote

Answer: Yee won the Republican primary this summer, which means Horne (the correct answer!) only has a few more months left as state superintendent. Horne also was state superintendent from 2003 to 2011, but this time around he couldn’t withstand a campaign by the Freedom Caucus, most notably Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman, to kick him out of office and usher in a more school voucher-friendly candidate like Yee. She’ll face off against Democrat Teresa Leyba Ruiz, a 35-year educator and the former president of Glendale Community College.

Answer: Arizona is in the minority here, so the correct answer is “false.” Voters elect the schools chief in just 14 states, while 24 states use their state board of education to appoint a superintendent and a dozen states leave that duty to the governor.

Answer: This board often flies under the radar, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that the governor appoints members to the board to four-year terms. (Though the Senate must confirm them within one year for the appointees to hold the seats. Right now, three of the 11 seats are vacant.) The only seat on the board that doesn’t get picked by the governor is the one belonging to the state superintendent, who is automatically on the board. Even if the public doesn’t hear much about the board, it has a lot of responsibilities, like certifying school employees, developing proficiency exams, gathering student performance data and notably, it sets the guidelines for the school voucher program. One big thing it doesn’t do is appropriate funds.

Answer: Gress is the chair of the Arizona House Education Committee. He represents Legislative District 4, which includes North Phoenix and Paradise Valley. He’s up for reelection this November and has been catching flak for his paid lobbying work on behalf of a national union-busting group. Werner is actually the vice chair of the Senate’s Education Committee and, incidentally, also represents LD4.

Answer: For better or worse, there is just one school finance measure on the ballot. Prop 320, which originated in the state Legislature and was sponsored in the House by Gress, would require some public school districts to spend 60% of their state funding on instructional expenditures or face financial penalties. School districts subject to Prop 320, should it pass, are those in counties with a population with 500,000 people or more, or that have 7,500 or more students enrolled in the district. That means all public schools in Maricopa and Pima counties would be subject to the law because their populations are at least 500,000. Plus, there are 37 additional school districts that it would apply to based on enrollment.

Answer: Public school districts submit enrollment numbers from two days in the school year — a sample of the average daily enrollment. That number is then multiplied by the state’s base amount. That count is a big deal for public schools. The state provides roughly half of public school funding, while the federal government pitches in 12% to 18%. Local property taxes round out the remaining balance.

Answer: Pima County has 18 public school districts, including 16 regularly operating districts and two “transportation-only” districts: Empire Elementary and Redington Elementary, per the Pima County School Superintendent’s Office. Empire and Redington do not have their own staff or operate their own schools.

Answer: All told, Pima County officials canceled 11 school board races. And these weren’t just small districts, either. The list includes Catalina Foothills, Flowing Wells, Marana Unified and other big districts. In most of the 11 districts, the number of candidates matched the number of open seats, so officials went ahead and canceled the elections.

Answer: TUSD is big, but it’s not the biggest in the state. That honor goes to Mesa Unified, which has nearly 53,000 students. Chandler Unified came in second with just under 40,000 students, and TUSD was close behind with about 39,000.

Answer: This one is where TUSD gets to shine. Tucson Magnet High School opened its doors in 1906 to 45 students. These days, more than 2,900 students are enrolled. There are older school buildings in the state, like Strawberry Schoolhouse in Strawberry (pictured above), which opened in 1885, but they aren’t functioning schools anymore.

Coming to T-town: U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly came to Tucson yesterday to visit a food bank as he highlights the Trump administration’s cuts to the SNAP program. Pima County officials recently released their estimate of how those cuts have been felt locally, which includes 24,000 children no longer receiving SNAP benefits. On Sept. 12, Pete Buttigieg is coming to town to campaign for JoAnna Mendoza, the Democratic candidate in Congressional District 6.

Remembering those we lost: Friends of Vincent Anthony Siqueiros and Cameron Davis Capara, who were murdered in the parking lot of the Venture-N early Monday morning, spoke to Lookout’s John Washington about their lives, their friendships and how they’ll be remembered. Elected officials went on social media to decry the hate crime, and Tucson Police Department will be patrolling LGBTQ+ establishments as the gunman (who turned the gun on himself) was reportedly carrying a list of places frequented by the community. A candlelight vigil for the two men will be held tonight at Catalina Park, next to the Philip Walsted memorial, reports the Tucson Sentinel’s Mia Kortright. Walsted was murdered in 2002 in what TPD labeled a hate crime.

Numbers are “noise”: University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella told the Faculty Senate that freshman enrollment hasn’t substantially changed, Prerana Sannappanavar reports for the Arizona Daily Star. Sannappanavar previously reported, based on internal university data, that UA saw a 19% drop in first-year undergrad enrollment last year, and a 23% drop this year. But without citing specific figures, Garimella dismissed the reporting and assuring faculty and staff that the enrollment numbers reported were a superficial comparison, equating it to “noise.”

Not done yet: ICE is back on the agenda for the Bisbee City Council, thanks to a newly elected council member, per the Herald/Review. Council member Terry Priestley won his seat in the July 21 election and now he’s asking the council to consider following in the footsteps of the City of Tucson and bar ICE from using city-owned property to stage immigration raids. The council tabled the issue a while back, but residents have been clamoring for the discussion.

Just changed tactics: The broader debate over ICE is probably going to ramp up again as the Trump administration changes tactics. Instead of sending goon squads to major cities, ICE is casting a wide net that ensnared 2,200 people in Arizona in July, Arizona Public Media’s Angela Gervasi reports. That tally is more than double the 888 arrests in July 2025. And, in what should come as no surprise to anyone outside the Trump bubble, less than 1% of the people arrested this July had convictions for violent crimes, and 57% had no criminal record whatsoever.

It’s going to be a bad week for dive bars here in Tucson.

They’re probably going to run out of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Vandals stole a truckload of everyone’s favorite $2 beer that was destined for Tucson out of a California warehouse.

The haul was worth an estimated $450,000 — quite a score for a beer famously brewed in Milwaukee for decades but no longer actually made there.

Sure, you can probably find something else to wet your whistle this week, but our bigger question is: how do you sell a truckload of beer?

The company has posted a reward for the return of the (unopened) cases of the budget-friendly American lager.

We’ll be joining the Tucson Police Department in keeping a close eye on Facebook Marketplace for any suspiciously good deals on beer.