Parade of roses/ P. 39
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Inside This Week
Kyrene gets sobering look at enrollment BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
E COMMUNITY ..... 23 Ahwatukee teen collecting water bottles for poor.
www.ahwatukee.com
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
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ight of Kyrene School District’s nine elementary schools in Ahwatukee and all three middle schools here saw an enrollment loss among the number of children who live within their attendance areas. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not attending a Kyrene school, demographer
Rick Brammer of Applied Economics told the Governing Board last week. It means their parents chose a school farther from home for a variety of reasons, such as the availability of special programs. “It used to be that everybody had this sense of community,” Brammer said, noting that now “you’ve got in one neighborhood, kids go into six or seven different schools.” That part of Brammer’s presentation may
have been one of the brighter revelations of a demographic report on enrollment trends that some board members conceded was unsettling. “Total enrollment has fallen steadily” in Kyrene in the last 20 years, Brammer’s report said, adding it reflects a decline of nearly 8,000 in-district students – “5,000 of which was due
see KYRENE page 20
2 Ahwatukee teens STRVE to create a business BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
BUSINESS ......... 30 New physical therapy clinic opening in Ahwatukee.
SPORTS ............. 35 Mt. Pointe's Jayden Davis is lightning ona. track. COMMUNITY ............................ 23 BUSINESS ................................ 30 SPORTS ................................... 35 GETOUT ................................... 39
A
s freshmen in Desert Vista High School, childhood friends Brendan Moore and Tyler Zitzka shared a dream. The Ahwatukee teens wanted to start their own clothing line. They came up with a transfer-on vinyl logo that they’d laboriously heat-press onto blank T-shirts for hours on end in their fledgling efforts to create a brand all their own. “We didn’t know what we were doing,” Tyler confessed, pointing to the first shirt they made that hangs on the wall of a spare bedroom of his home. Though “we still love the old shirts and hold them close to our hearts,” Tyler said that hanging shirt also reminds them of how far they have in a relatively short period of time. They’ve been guided by the principle encapsulated in their company’s name – STRVE, an
see STRVE page 17
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Brendan Moore, left, and Tyler Zitzka, both Desert Vista seniors and Ahwatukee residents, started a clothing company out of their home that promotes a guiding principle in their lives: strive and push yourself to be the very best. (David Minton/AFN Staff Photographer) 20 POINT SUMMER IS COMING precision TUNE UP
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