>>> Good evening and welcome to Arizona horizon.

President Biden today signed his one point to trillion dollar infrastructure bill into law.

The signing ceremony on the white house lawn included in an abundance of Democrats including Senator Kyrsten Sinema who shepherded the bill through the Senate.

There is a smattering of Republicans on hand to see the bipartisan bill become law.

The president said the public wants that kind of bipartisanship when the message is received.

>> We hear you and we See you.

the bill about to be signed into law is proof that Democrats and Republicans can come together and deliver results.

>> Tucson Mayor was also at the White House for today's assigning.

Romero, a strong regional proponent of the bipartisan bill, was invited by the president to attend today's event.

>> In order to pass such and historic bill, every level of government needs to participate.

As a elected official, as a supporter of the President times president, I understand how important President Biden wants to have bipartisan support.

Every single level of government made a difference.

>> President Biden today also signed an executive order directing federal agencies to address what the administration calls and epidemic of missing or murdered indigenous people.

Along with the executive order, the president announced a number of new initiative including the protection of tribal treaty rights, improvements in the management and stewardship of federal lands and incorporating tribal ecological knowledge in addressing climate change issues.

Other news, the state announced the $100 million grant program to expand high-speed broadband to underserved areas.

The program is designed to help communities construct broadband infrastructure for homes and schools along with businesses and public safety operations.

Funding for the grant program will come from the Biden administration's American Rescue Plan act.

Gnomic the governing board of the Scottsdale unified school District is scheduled to hold a special meeting tonight to address reports that the district president Jan Michael Greenberg and his father compiled a secret dossier that included information on parents and others considered political enemies.

The dossier reportedly contains videos of parents saying racist and insulting things, but reportedly includes photos of children and personal information including Social Security numbers and tax documents.

The district is conducting an investigation.

Police are looking into it too.

Gnomic a new study finds a link between antidepressants and reduced mortality rates from COVID-19 paired with the research shows that people taking Prozac were 28% less likely to die from COVID Burke a similar drug showed 26% reduced COVID mortality.

Scientist think the medication may reduce inflammation compounds that go into overdrive in severe COVID infections.

>>> It was recently revealed that Chicanos had on one time three sitting state lawmakers on its payroll.

Them lawmakers say everything is aboveboard, but the practice has raised questions and we learned more from Ray Stern of the Arizona Republic who has been following the story.

>> Reporter: Good to have you here.

Thanks for joining us.

Good to have you.

This is quite the story.

Let's start with some basics.

What is that?

>> It's one of the largest Latino nonprofits and one of the biggest nonprofits in the state.

They had there anniversary and it was started and went into this mega nonprofit.

They do affordable housing, childcare, educational purposes, loans, all kinds of things.

There are four state lawmakers on the payroll here.

>> 1 of the missions is political empowerment.

They are very engaged with people in the community making more politically empowered and in this case for some reason they hired lawmakers.

There is nothing illegal about it, but it is very unusual.

Nothing quite like it.

>> What were they paid to do.

>> I guess you could call that the problem.

It's the lack of transparency.

Although there is no law that prevents the lawmaker from getting a job on the nonprofit or anywhere, they were only making $24,000 a year.

They need other jobs.

The problem here is that the annual disclosure form they fill out only requires them to list the entities that are paying them more than $1,000 per year.

All we know that they paid them dead of 1,000.

We have gotten a couple statements from them, but it's unclear.

>> Reporter: We don't know how much they were paying?

>> We don't know how much and we don't know the job description either.

>> Reporter: Did the work result in federal grant monies or anything that we see federal favorable treatment.

>> The answer would be yes.

There is no direct connection to these lawmakers for any particular amount of money that came in.

This is an agency that is down the legislature frequency.

They are involved in so many different things and they probably each year have dozens of different bills that they support or oppose.

They have these people on the payroll.

We don't know what they are doing, but I found evidence they are engaged in the legislative process for some things that they like.

You have to wonder where does the influence start and end with these people on the payroll?

>> If it is involved with the housing subsidies, for example, and these lawmakers are pushing for affordable housing subsidies, do they see a conflict in something like that, the lawmakers?

>> That's a good question.

They didn't put in any kind of paperwork for bills that they have sponsored that they could have benefited from.

For instance, I found out one that they called a legislative priority and it was a bill for affordable housing money that they could have gotten affordable housing projects.

1 of the four legislatures was on the payroll sponsored this bill.

The Democrats don't get much passed in Arizona.

That bill went nowhere.

It makes you wonder whether he had a disclosure for that.

>> Reporter: We're lawmakers forthcoming about the situation to you or anyone?

>> 3 of them were forthcoming in terms of what the law requires.

The law requires public officials to do an annual financial disclosure.

They have to say who is paying more than $1,000.

3 of four put that on there.

the fourth one had his company put on there saying that they paid him more than 1,000 and.

He admitted to me that they were working or had a client.

>> Reporter: The reason we are talking to you about this is we want to figure out how unusual is something like this.

How is this legal to have sitting lawmakers doing work for nonprofits?

>> It absolutely is legal in Arizona.

An example of a conflict of interest problem that you can say we have in Arizona where the conflict of interest laws are loose.

They really center on the idea of something called the rule of 10.

If a legislature is doing something that affects 10 or more people than even if it brings them personal financial benefit it's not considered a conflict of interest under the law.

If it affects 10 or more people.

To give you an example like this law that I was mentioning that Cesar Chavez had sponsored.

Basically you can argue he didn't need to put in a disclosure because it would have affected lots of nonprofits including the one paying him.

It's a little bit murky.

One of the interesting things I found in the research was there had been 10 legislatures who put in 17 disclosures over the last two years for things that are just like this.

There's really no telling why some should do it and others not.

Not a lot of people that I talked to like ethics experts say there should be more disclosure.

>> Reporter: It seems a bit off.

Last question.

Thanks for coming in.

We do appreciate this.

I recall there was a Bush big push for ethics reform because of situations like this, conflicts of interest and other things going on.

What happened to that?

>> It kind of died of premature death, I guess you could say.

There was a lot of interest in that after the Don shooter situation.

He allegedly harassed up their legislative members.

They wanted to do a code of conduct that would give legislators a better idea how they should comport themselves.

As part of this they were going to upgrade their ethics rules.

One of the things, I saw the language for a proposed rule that would have gone into plays that didn't go anywhere in 2019.

Basically it gave legislators a little more idea of how they were supposed to not create these conflicts of interest or perceived conflicts of interest.

One of the things that was interesting and told the legislators they should accept the fact that they cannot just do whatever the public does.

They have to take extra caution above and beyond what the average person might do to make sure they are not leaving this perception.

>> Reporter: But we are still waiting?

>> Great job.

Great to have you with us.

>>> Up next on Arizona horizon, how best to address Arizona's persistent teacher shortage.

>>> The upcoming state legislative session will no doubt include a familiar battle over education resources.

Producer Grace and videographer Rudy look at some recent numbers in the fight for more education funding and what ASU's College of education is doing to attract more teachers to the classroom.

>> Do you see trash on the floor and outside?

What is a possible solution to that problem?

Raise your hand and tell me.

>> Reporter: She is teaching her third grade students at elementary in Mesa how to think about solving everyday problems.

>> Pick up the trash.

That's an easy solution.

>> Reporter: Not so easy to solve all the issues facing her teaching profession.

Many state's are experiencing teacher shortages and Arizona is no different.

The state is also consistently at the bottom of the heap in teachers salaries and working conditions.

According to data released by the state department of education for the 2019-2020 school year the average teacher salary in Arizona was $50,782.

That places Arizona 46th out of 50 states.

Down three spots from the year before.

The national average for teacher salaries is a little more than $64,000 a year.

The pay issue is top of mind and top of the agenda for the Arizona education Association.

According to the teachers union, there are other serious workload issues driving educators from jobs they love.

>> Before we were in a pandemic Arizona had three decades of significant tax cuts that had underfunded our schools.

They over cut our classrooms and pushed teachers to other state's where they can get better working conditions and they can get respectful salaries.

>> He is referring to tax cuts enacted by the state legislator every year, but two since 1990.

The cost of running a classroom keeps increasing due to many things, including necessary technology.

Republican state senator Paul Boyer is chair of the Senate education committee and a teacher.

>> We have done all we can to make sure we put more money into their pockets and we will look at ways we can reduce overhead.

Back to the Arizona auditor General report where there is less dollars being spent in the classroom.

That's a problem.

>> Reporter: According to the personnel administrators Association the state ranks 48th in terms of spending per student.

That is more than $4,000 less than the national average.

Funding issues and low wages can be seen as key reasons why there is a teacher shortage in Arizona.

Currently nearly 1700 openings for educators K-12.

The ASU College of education team says retention and recruitment are just part of a larger issue.

>> The numbers tell you only so much about what is happening.

I think there are good people trying to do good things.

We have a long way to go.

We are not going to be able to do this.

We need a change to get there.

>> Reporter: Enter the ASU College of education workforce.

They call it a way to repair education.

It's this initiative that brought the Houston elementary classrooms to learn on the job and have the coaching of experienced teachers like Laura.

Laura is all in on this team -based effort.

>> There's a lot more demands on education now.

We are expected to be able to do a lot more a lot quicker.

To be able to meet all these standards when some of our students are coming in and are so far below grade level that they cannot possibly meet that goal.

I know it's successful because when I am in the classroom, students are engaged at levels that I have never seen before.

They are happy and motivated and invested in their learning.

The other way I know it successful is that teachers are as well.

>> Reporter: Adriana is a teacher honing her skills as a senior in the ASU College of education program.

She's not just a student teacher, but a collaborator and fulfilling a lifelong dream.

>> I had a teacher in high school that genuinely cared about me.

I realized when she cared about me I was excited to come to school.

I would go to her class and was excited to do the work.

I decided I wanted to be that for other kids.

>> Reporter: The cooperative teaching team realizes it could be a while before any political debate on education funding gets resolved at the state level.

But they look forward to coming to school every day.

That is largely due to the fact that Arizona's kids will continue to need help in order to learn and grow.

>> We are going to need everyone to know something about how to teach.

This is a profession.

We need to professionalize the profession.

We need to think about how we not only change the working condition for teachers, but also the learning environment for kids so we can personalize and deepen learning and get these kids to where we think they need to go for their future.

>>> The next education workforce is the result of years of research and development by ASU's College of education.

Earlier today we spoke with the workforces Brent Madden about innovative new efforts to help K-12 students.

>> Reporter: Thanks for joining us.

It's good to have you here.

Let's talk about the teacher shortage.

Is there any sign right now of improvement?

>> Honestly we are in a challenging time for educators here in Arizona and across the country.

The expectations for educators working conditions, the fact that educators are having to cover for the classrooms for their colleagues who are missing.

All of this just translates in to a problem that we have been seeing for a very long time, which is we don't have enough great teachers in all of our classrooms, especially for our students.

We need great teachers every day.

>> Reporter: Are we seeing a lot of teachers retiring?

Are we seeing teachers leaving due to burnout?

>> Both of those things are absolutely true.

And we see teachers early in their careers leaving as well.

In part because no matter the amount of great preparation they have had, the job of being a classroom teacher, which I have done, is one of the most rewarding, but also very, very complicated.

>> Reporter: Complicated, and I am sure is more complicated now with COVID.

How has the pandemic change the entire dynamic?

>> Before COVID there we're already 180 things that educators needed to know and be able to do to be experts.

The first day on the job looks remarkably similar to say the 3,000 day on the job.

You start with that.

Already a set of things that we expect one person to be great at.

Then you start to add on epidemiology.

You start to add on covering for your colleagues.

What you find is that you have created a job that is really quite literally unsustainable.

>> Reporter: Before we get to the next set, impact of teacher pay.

Has that been mitigated somewhat by recent legislative action?

>> Any effort we are making to improve the pay for teachers everywhere, 46 in the country in terms of educator pay.

More must be done to raise the salaries for educators.

I would even go further and say we need to fundamentally question the way that we have organized the staffing of our schools.

>> Reporter: That takes us to the next education workforce.

First of all, what is the next education workforce?

>> When you think about the way most humans show up to work every day, we are in a collaborative team -based environment.

Interestingly, educators spend most of their time alone in a classroom with young people.

There are some week legality.

At the end of the day we believe that a team of educators coming together around a shared roster of students actually allows that team to distribute their expertise.

Not to be masters of everything.

In so doing, we can actually deliver on the promise of deeper and personalize learning.

Not just for some kids, but for all kids.

>> Reporter: How do you make sure you get the right team together?

How do you choose the team?

>> The same way we would choose any team.

We look for particular strengths.

It's interesting the way we organize ourselves.

You have a degree in elementary education.

The reality is that educators have specific specialties.

If we thought about combining our educators around their superpowers or their strengths, you didn't have to be great at everything.

You can actually share that load.

>> Reporter: How does that translate to the classroom?

How does it translate to teaching Little times little Johnny and little Susie?

>> We have about 30 schools we are working with across the Phoenix metro.

You walk into these classrooms and actually see educators working together.

They are not by themselves in single rooms, but sharing a group of students.

The students are moving dynamically through the rooms.

The educators are saying things like I have never felt so excited to be working with my colleagues.

>> Reporter: Is there a best practice for this?

Is this modeled after something that has proven successful?

>> We are doing a ton of work in close partnership with the Teachers College at ASU.

Along with our partners in K-12 districts.

We are designing these models.

What we are finding is a single model probably doesn't work in every single community.

Instead, it needs to be tailored to the actual set of students and educators and community in which the model is.

>> Reporter: You are talking systemic change in education.

>> Indeed.

We spend a lot of time worrying and rightfully so about the teacher shortage.

We never stopped to question have we actually created a workforce that is designed in a way that it might not actually be sustainable for educators or maybe even great for kids?

>> I wanted to get back to that.

We are talking about sustainability for educators and keeping teachers on the job.

Quit losing so many.

The bottom line, our kids getting educated?

>> The reality is, when we think about the future and preparing our students, we have no idea what is coming.

What are the habits of mind that we need to have with our young people, that hour young people need to have, in order to be successful in this uncertain situation?

Reading and mathematics and all of that is very important.

What about all of the critical thinking skills?

What would happen when you start to bring a team of educators around a group of students.

Suddenly the ability to have deep and personalized learning for all kids becomes something that is far more plausible.

>> Reporter: Getting a good education is the bottom line.

Brett Madden, ASU next education workforce.

Good conversation.

Thanks for joining us.

>> Thanks for having me.

Testing Cronkite.

>>> Tonight on the news hour, the road ahead.

President Biden signed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill into law.

Coming up after local news on Arizona PBS.

>>> That is it for now.

I am Ted.

Thanks for joining us.

You have a great evening.

Coming up in the next half hour on Arizona PBS.

On Cronkite news, a look at the new resources designed to help women entrepreneurs succeed.

>>> Coming up tonight on Arizona PBS.

At 7:00, at 8:00, at 9:00.

Tonight, starting at 7:00 only on Arizona PBS.

>>> Arizona PBS celebrates a moment in time.

Made possible by Whitfield nursery.

Raul Hector Castro became the first Latino governor in 1975.

The former superior court judge was also appointed U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and Argentina.

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>>> Coming up, President Joe Biden signs a $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

We will have details.

>>> Plans to improve safety and justice for Native American lands.

>>> Later, how they are trying to bounce back.

Some new senior leadership.

>>> Cronkite news starts right now.