Thumbs up, down from the Yuma Sun
• Thumbs up to the Crane School District for its new Teachers Academy. The program will help Crane employees who are teaching in classrooms with emergency teacher certificates gain their official teaching certificates. It’s a free program that should help grow teachers right here in Yuma County, helping professionals with bachelors’ degrees make the leap into teaching.
• Thumbs up to San Luis High’s Efren Figueroa and Cibola High’s Kaylee Woods! The two students are finalists for the Flinn Foundation scholarship! If selected, they will be able to attend an Arizona public university and have the costs of their tuition, fees, room and board and two study-abroad experiences covered. We wish Efren and Kaylee the best of luck!
• Thumbs up to the city of Yuma, which broke ground this week on a new fire station to serve the city’s eastern limits. Fire Station 7 will be located at 3293 S Avenue 8 1/2E, and will cost $5.7 million. Once it’s operational, it will reduce response times in the area, which has seen a 77 percent increase in the number of calls for service in the past three years. Kudos to the city for recognizing the demand and putting a solution in place!
• Thumbs up to the Yuma County Board of Supervisors for paying attention to the community and moving part of its meeting to the Yuma City Hall to accommodate a higher-than-usual expected turnout. The supervisors’ agenda contained some zoning cases that had drawn packed audiences when the Planning and Zoning Commission heard them in January. Monday’s meeting did in fact pack Yuma City Hall, so the supervisors were right to move it!
• Thumbs up to Yuma School District One for voting to increase salaries by 8%, effective July 1. Teacher salary will go up, as will hourly wages for bus drivers. Several support staff positions will also get additional benefits. It’s great news for staff at District One!
• Thumbs down to time – specifically, how it flies by. Readers, we don’t understand how it’s March 10 already. Didn’t we just celebrate the new year a few minutes ago? It’s baffling.
• Thumbs down to airline passengers who misbehave and act disruptive on flights. This time, it was a passenger on a Southwest plane in Dallas, who started punching another passenger while they were boarding the plane. The two were escorted off the plane before takeoff, and the flight still departed to Phoenix on time. But why such chaos? People need to settle down.
Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down are compiled by the Yuma Sun editorial board, based on recent events, happenings and activities around Yuma County and the nation, and will appear on Fridays in the Yuma Sun.