Oro Valley Library: Pay For It Once Or Twice?

As we noted in a previous posting, the Oro Valley Council will be holding a Study Session on Wed. Jan 14 @ 5:30 PM.

One issue of prime importance is the question of what do do with the 214 acre Naranja Park site now that the $48.6M bond issue was defeated.

The 2nd critical issue has to do with the library.

Oro Valley residents are now paying twice to operate our library. For those who may not realize it, among the multitude of taxes we pay, including Pima County Property Tax, Amphi School taxes, county bonds, etc. is a Library Tax in the amount of about $100 per household.

Additionally, inasmuch as OV runs its own library, whereas other Pima County branches are under the auspices of the county, we, as a community are operating our library at a deficit of approx. one million dollars per year.

The question is this: Should we continue paying twice, or turn the library over to the county (similar to the other branches) and pay ONLY the mandated tax?

To have your voices heard on these two issues, please attend the meeting on Wed. Jan14.

Goldwater Institute Study Shows Arizona Student Learning Well Below Average

A Goldwater Institute study shows that Arizona is below almost every state when it comes to student learning.

We thought our readers would find this information interesting, but, perhaps, not surprising.

The Goldwater Institute Daily January 12, 2009 Will NCLB undermine education success stories? By Matthew Ladner, Ph.D. Coinciding with the seventh anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act, the Heritage Foundation released a study I co-authored with senior policy analyst Dan Lips making the case that real education reform needs to come up from the states, rather than down from the federal government. The study focuses on the success of Florida's reforms and notes that NCLB actually threatens Florida's continued success. Lips and I found that nationally progress on NAEP has been about the same before and after NCLB despite a huge increase in federal funding. Ironically, the utopian meddling of NCLB requiring states to achieve 100 percent "proficiency" by 2014 will undermine successful reform efforts like Florida's by incentivizing the dummying down of their state exam, the FCAT. It would be a shame if President Bush's over-reaching undermined his brother's spectacular success, which is likely to happen unless Congress alters NCLB. Notice on the map below that not only is Arizona's average decisively outscored by Florida's Hispanics, but also by West Virginia, the state most closely associated with Appalachian poverty. We've got our work cut out for us, but improvement in student learning is not only necessary it's achievable. Dr. Matthew Ladner is vice president for research at the Goldwater Institute.