As funding continues on a downward spiral, educators and administrators are faced with the daunting task of keeping schools staffed and operating. While the laying off of teachers grabs the majority of school budget-cut headlines, there is a whole other group that is just as vital to kids’ success in schools and whose numbers are also dwindling: nurses.

Maressa Curran has lived with type 1 diabetes for 21 years. At age 23, she can care for herself now, but it hasn’t always been that way. Attending school in the mid-1990s, she found little support for diabetic students because awareness and diagnosis of the disease, especially in children, was lacking.

Time has run out for school districts that aren’t compliant with the state’s English Language Learner program.

In the three years since the program, which requires four hours a day of English immersion for students who aren’t proficient in the language, was established, not one school district has been sanctioned financially for non-compliance, even though a sanction is required by law, according to a report by the Office of the Auditor General.

Funding Arizona’s K-12 public schools is on the mind of every educator, most policymakers, and business leaders — those who count on a ready workforce. The Arizona Business & Education Coalition (ABEC) presents a set of proposals to redesign the school finance system entirely, to support increasingly higher levels of learning in all public schools.

As a place to do business and in matters related to public policy, personal freedom and taxation, Arizona is a solid “C” student. But can it afford to stay that way?

When it comes to wildfires, size really matters — the bigger the blaze, the greater potential danger to homes, businesses, wildlife, trees, shrubs, the environment, and most important, people.

Since the late 1970s, rising crime has led lawmakers to require prison time for many non-violent offenses.

But some say eliminating the options of fines, work release, substance-abuse treatment and house arrest in favor of prison time can turn non-violent offenders into career criminals.

Now, as states face large budget deficits, calls for reforming sentencing for non-violent offenders also are coming increasingly from conservatives who call prison costs unsustainable.

The Legislature tried to give probation departments a financial incentive in 2008 to keep revocations and prison populations down.

However, lawmakers never came up with the money for the incentives. And this past session, lawmakers repealed the incentives program known as the Safe Communities Act (SCA). Even in the absence of the financial part, the program was considered a success by some because of the methods probation departments developed and refined during that time.

Right before Brent Uffelman was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, he wasn’t noticing any extreme symptoms. Sure, he felt tired at times, but that could have been the result of a long day at work, he told himself. It wasn’t until he met a friend for breakfast before starting his day’s shift at Alliance Beverage Distributing Co. that he began to see and feel indisputable signs that something was really wrong. He was passing blood, but felt well enough to finish the workday.

As Phoenix awaits the arrival of the world’s fastest supercomputer dedicated to health information, the time gap in translating new discoveries in medicine into new treatments continues to grow.