Dyan Norfleet had to dip into her savings to pay her August bill at Twin Palms, a north side Tucson mobile home park. The total bill was more than $900, including $171 in electricity costs — the month before she had paid $777.21 for lot rent, house rent and utilities, according to bills shared with […]

Mohammad Noori enrolled at Catalina High School more than two years ago as an immigrant from Afghanistan. He spoke only his native Dari — a Persian dialect.  He was overwhelmed. Yet, he was hopeful, he says. School was a daily struggle. Today, the junior ranks near the top of his class and wants to attend […]

The flexibility of substitute teaching appealed to Dolores de Vera after she moved to Tucson from Missouri over a decade ago.  The hours fit her schedule. The students and her coworkers were fun and she learned the city through her school assignments. Fellow substitute teacher Jerry Schuster grew up in the Tucson Unified School District. […]

Rep. Adelita Grijalva introduced three bills last week that would fund family literacy classes, dual language programs and teacher training for students learning English. Grijalva, a Democrat, filed the bills Sept. 16. The same day, Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica reported that Arizona had lowered the score students need to pass the state’s English proficiency test, […]

The Pima County Supervisors approved a 120-day data center moratorium Tuesday, giving the county time to create new zoning regulations for large-scale data centers.  The moratorium passed with a 3-2 v...

After residents asked Tucson City Council to make significant changes to its large water user ordinance, council members on Tuesday narrowly approved an ordinance with only minor changes proposed by c...

When Ford Elementary School principal Vince Kelly got up about an hour into Monday night’s Tucson Unified School District school closure meeting, he took the microphone and opened with the word “trans...

The Tucson Unified School District holds the first of three community meetings tonight to get public input on the closure and consolidation of neighborhood schools. TUSD district administrators will present realignment data showing why it needs to close up to 10 schools in the 88-school district, Southern Arizona’s largest.  No specific school closures or consolidations […]

Pima County’s Joint Technical Education District will ask voters to raise property taxes for JTED for the first time ever, citing explosive growth in career and technical education. JTED — a separate school district born in 2007 and serving about 30,000 students throughout Southern Arizona — has a $250 million bond on the November ballot.  […]

A federal judge has denied efforts to remove oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, saying the agency continues to show racial disparities in traffic arrests of Latinos — and that there is not enough evidence that efforts to improve would stick without legal monitoring.

Tucson City Council will consider proposed changes to its large water user ordinance Tuesday, but some environmental advocates and Tucson residents say the changes don’t go far enough. The city counci...

In the Tucson Unified School District, the percentage of test-taking students who scored high enough to be classified as proficient in English more than doubled — from 10% in 2025 to 24% in 2026. Rather than a big leap in fluency, however, the test results reflect the Arizona Department of Education lowering the grade needed to pass.

Seventh grader Mauricio Armenta traded his 3-foot trombone for some headphones, a keyboard and mouse this school year. Instead of playing in the band, Mauricio says he wanted to learn a different way to play music. Teacher Ian Mast helps Mauricio and other Utterback Middle School students deepen their music knowledge and become composers with […]

Rep. Yassamin Ansari visited a Phoenix ICE facility. Here’s what she found inside. U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari visited the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Phoenix Field Office on Sept. 9 following reporting from the AZ Mirror that raised concerns about conditions for people held at the facility. “The reason I decided to come to this […]

Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani and Democratic challenger JoAnna Mendoza will face each other for the first time in a debate tonight at 6 p.m. Ciscomani is seeking a third term in Congress after first winning the seat in 2022. He narrowly defeated Democrat Kirsten Engel in 2022 and again in a 2024 rematch. Before being […]

When Robert Meade noticed a storm had blown a number of shingles off the roof of his four-room manufactured home several years ago, his heart sank. Meade, who is in his 80s, didn’t know how they would fix the roof until his granddaughter told him she had found a county program that would help.  “We […]

Last summer, Kansas State University veterinarian Gretel Tovar-Lopez headed south on Interstate 35 bound for Oklahoma State University, home to a colony of Sonoran desert toads. She and her colleagues wanted to give each toad a neurological exam to find out whether what’s normal in one species is normal in another. It turns out it’s […]

It’s 103 degrees outside, and it’s hard to avoid the unrelenting heat, even on Tamara Shamrock’s shaded porch. But Tamara, 61, is only outside for a little while before she’s whisked into Tiffany Johnson’s car, where the air conditioning is blasting.  “You’re the most important person to them when they take you to a doctor’s […]

A first look at the range of data used to determine which Tucson Unified School District schools will close and be consolidated was made publicly available Thursday afternoon. The 31 members of a committee consulting on the reconfiguration include Tucson political figures, union leaders, business people and parents, are also named for the first time on […]

More than 1,000 supporters and mourners gathered at Catalina Park near Fourth Avenue on Wednesday, Sept. 2, many draped in rainbow flags and clothing bearing anti-hate messages, carrying candles and b...

It may not have been easy exactly, but it was more manageable for Tree Lafferty to spend Arizona summers unhoused when she was younger. As Lafferty aged, sitting on the hot concrete, or being nudged along from shady downtown spaces, felt harder to take. “I was a lot stronger,” said Lafferty, 61. “There was much […]

Standing near the pond at Quitobaquito Springs, Lorraine Marquez Eiler, a Hia-Ced O’odham elder, shared how her ancestors held ceremonies at the sacred site — a desert oasis in a national park that th...

Each Wednesday evening, upwards of 100 people line up on a sidewalk adjoining Tucson’s Armory Park for a hot meal served in heaping portions from steaming containers lined up on a folding table.  It’s a bounty of food offered to an unhoused community that is often food insecure — and each week the food for […]

More people were arrested by immigration authorities in Arizona in July 2026 than any time in the previous four years, according to data visualized by the Deportation Data Project.  The starkest window into the number of immigration arrests comes from comparing the number of people arrested in July 2023 — 328 people — with July […]

The Tucson Unified School District will discuss its plan for closing and consolidating schools amid declining enrollment at its Aug. 25 Governing Board meeting. Clarifying details should come in the board meeting presentation called “Reimagining Our Schools Together — A Community Engagement Plan for Elements of the Enrollment Stabilization Program,” according to TUSD’s agenda. The […]

Arizona’s teacher retention crisis affects classrooms and students but it also costs taxpayers money. A tool from the Learning Policy Institute puts the annual cost of replacing departing teachers in Arizona at more than $150 million.  In Arizona, 14% teachers leave their jobs — double the national average rate of 7%, according to the Center […]

Julius Gorton pushes a rectangle-shaped rock into the ground then shakes it. Still loose. He takes the pick axe next to him and hammers it down.  “OK, maybe it just needs to dig out a little bit,” Ella Marshall says. She moves the rock aside and starts digging a gap into the dirt, her hands […]

While walking his dog, the chemistry teacher saw a dishwasher across the street. It was parked on the curb. It needed a hose and electrical line. It was abandoned. Free. Blake Betteridge was unsure it worked. He only knew he needed one in his chemistry classroom at Desert View High School. Once he got the […]

Pima County, the city of Tucson and the Sierra Club all declined to sign a non-disclosure agreement this year with Tucson Electric Power, giving up access to the modeling data that is part of a major energy planning process rather than agree to the confidentiality terms.  The agreement is tied to TEP’s Integrated Resource Plan, […]

During a Tucson raid last week, photos taken by observers show one vehicle standing out with a clear agency name: DEA, or Drug Enforcement Administration.  That agency has traditionally focused on enforcing drug laws, including targeting people who produce and sell prohibited drugs.  But under the Trump administration’s crackdown, DEA agents are increasingly arresting immigrants, […]

The Tucson Unified School District proposed a four-day school week and a year-round calendar for the 2027-28 school year in an email survey to families late Friday afternoon. The year-round option beg...

Tiff Williams was walking their dog around 6 a.m. Thursday in their north side Tucson neighborhood when they saw a commotion at the house across the street.   Williams watched as agents spilled out of a large gray tank-like vehicle, guns drawn, and began yelling in English and Spanish. The officers arrested several men as well […]

The Pima County board of supervisors is asking its staff to draft policies intended to provide more transparency and accountability over large development projects in the county, like data centers.  They also asked county staff to create a resolution that, if approved, would put a 120-day moratorium on data centers to give the county time […]

FLAGSTAFF — When it became clear last spring Ruben Rosthenhausler would lose his job as manager of the Berger Performing Arts Center, he told himself to remain open to all possibilities. There was lots to be grateful for even after he learned the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind would move campuses […]

One local teacher dumpster dives for classroom supplies. Another left his job of more than two decades to enter the classroom, inspired by his family of educators and his children. Others are returning to school themselves, earning master’s degrees while managing a classroom of their own for the first time. It’s what staying in the […]

The Tucson City Council approved new regulations on large-scale data centers Wednesday, making them one of the most regulated land uses in the city.  The mayor and council also directed city staff to continue looking into potentially banning large-scale data centers altogether, or recommending stricter regulations as community members told the council the proposed regulations […]

When Carmen De Backer was a toddler, she would sit on the couch staring at photos of wildlife in the worn pages of National Geographic magazines her mom bought at the thrift store. She couldn’t read the articles so she would ask her older sisters to tell her about the wildlife in the photos.  That’s […]

The speaker crackles as the new yellow school bus grazes bumps, shuffling Superintendent Kevin Stoltzfus in his seat.  Nonetheless, he continues with Flowing Wells Unified School District trivia. “And that is our newest school in the district. The Emily Meschter Early Learning Center on Prince Road,” he tells the busload of 20 new teachers. “The Emily […]

PEACH SPRINGS, Ariz. — “Do we have the radios?” Rachael DeFord asks. Four girls, all members of Walapai Media’s youth radio club, have piled into a blue Chevy Silverado. They plan to loop around Peach Springs, an enclave of 1,100 people and the largest town on Hualapai Tribal land in northwest Arizona. They cross Hualapai […]

Getting a child into a free or low-cost preschool seat in Pima County is becoming harder, even as more families need help.  Pima Early Education Program Scholarships, or PEEPs, saw a drop in the number of children it served in its fourth year, along with a decline in participating preschool providers, as funding tightened, according […]

Alma Mejia-Garcia adjusted her collar and clipped on a mic as a spotlight shone on her face. The 25-year educator was ready to talk about her new job as interim principal at Pueblo High School, after she was named at Tuesday night’s Governing Board meeting. One of the Warriors’ assistant principals last year, Mejia-Garcia takes […]

It was a quiet election night at home last Tuesday for Republican Kimberly Yee and her family. But 24 hours later, the excitement took hold, Yee said, when she got the news she won the primary for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Yee’s victory sets up a Nov. 3 general election race against Democrat Terry […]

Tucson’s homelessness outreach workers spent a decade using a national questionnaire to decide who gets housing resources. This summer they’re using a homegrown one instead that is centered around a n...

The Greater Yuma Port Authority is eyeing hundreds of acres of undeveloped land near the San Luis border crossing and has set aside $400,000 to study whether the commercial port could someday open to everyday car traffic. San Luis processed $4.1 billion in commercial trade in 2025, with agriculture accounting for 72% of that volume, […]

The Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind violated federal disability law last spring when it restricted placement options for students and predetermined where they should attend, the Arizona State Department of Education says. As it prepared to shut its west-side Tucson campus and move 15 miles away to Oro Valley, ASDB told […]

A Pima County Superior Court judge is expected to rule soon about whether a lawsuit brought by a former University of Arizona employee can proceed to trial, leaving unresolved for the moment a legal dispute that offers a window into dysfunction inside the UA’s College of Education in the months before the university’s financial crisis […]

Find live Arizona primary election results for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, plus local races in Marana and South Tucson

Un nuevo programa piloto del Departamento de Policía de Tucson creará una lista de las 50 personas que con mayor frecuencia han sido condenadas por allanamiento, merodeo y posesión de parafernalia relacionada con drogas, con el fin de ofrecerles servicios adicionales. Pero si se niegan a recibir ayuda o reinciden, podrían enfrentar sanciones penales más […]

A new pilot program run by Tucson Police Department will create a list of the 50 people most often convicted of trespassing, loitering and being caught with drug paraphernalia to offer them additional services. But if they refuse or reoffend, it could mean harsher criminal penalties.  The program is the latest in Tucson’s ongoing effort […]

The black and white checkerboard backpack sits next to a pale pink and purple floral print, while a solid turquoise nylon pack with a gray zipper leans against both. The packs are stacked on desks, shelves and the floor and ready to be filled with school supplies including highlighters, pencils, notebooks, folders and more. Those […]