Natalie Luna Rose, Sadie Shaw and Ravi Grivois-Shah are projected to win seats to the TUSD governing board, beating out four other candidates.
As of Wednesday, Pima County still had upwards of 44,000 votes to count.
The governing board for Southern Arizonaβs largest school district, Tucson Unified, makes decisions that control a $500 million budget and affects the lives of about 42,500 children and their families.Β
The three newcomers, to be seated in January for the volunteer positions on the five-person board, will be responsible for seeing the district through educating students during the COVID-19 pandemic, an enrollment loss upwards of 2,500 students, a possible $15 million budget shortfall, a continuing statewide teacher shortage and TUSDβs ongoing desegregation order, already in place for more than 40 years.
Board president Kristel Foster and board members Rachael Sedgwick and Bruce Burke all declined to run for reelection, leaving three seats open. Luna Rose, Shaw andΒ Grivois-Shah would join board members Adelita Grijalva and Leila Counts.
LunaΒ Rose, who garnered more votes than any other candidate, is a TUSD parent and founding member of Tucson Unified Parent Advocacy Council.
She works as community and outreach manager at the Arizona Center for Disability Law. She has been doing grassroots organizing for almost 20 years, participating in the public process at all levels.
Shaw is an artist, art educator and community advocate. She volunteers in TUSD schools, currently as part of an art program at Catalina High School.
She serves on the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee for both the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona as well as the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson, where she is the education program co-chair.
Grivois-ShahΒ is a TUSD parent and involved member of the Tucson Unified community. He is a parent member of the TUSD Audit Committee, and last year he served on the districtβs Family Life Curriculum Committee to revise the sex education curricula.
He has been a family physician for the last 15 years, and he recently became CEO of the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation.
The three winners are projected to beat out candidatesΒ Adam Ragan, Cindy Winston, Nick Pierson and write in candidate Cristina Mennella.
Photos: 2020 General Election in Pima County and Arizona
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Judge throws out lawsuit, finds no fraud or misconduct in Arizona election
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PHOENIX β A judge tossed out a bid by the head of the Arizona Republican Party to void the election results that awarded the stateβs 11 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden.
The two days of testimony produced in the case brought by GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward produced no evidence of fraud or misconduct in how the vote was conducted in Maricopa County, said Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner in his Friday ruling.
Warner acknowledged that there were some human errors made when ballots that could not be read by machines due to marks or other problems were duplicated by hand.
But he said that a random sample of those duplicated ballots showed an accuracy rate of 99.45%.
Warner said there was no evidence that the error rate, even if extrapolated to all the 27,869 duplicated ballots, would change the fact that Biden beat President Trump.
The judge also threw out charges that there were illegal votes based on claims that the signatures on the envelopes containing early ballots were not properly compared with those already on file.
He pointed out that a forensic document examiner hired by Wardβs attorney reviewed 100 of those envelopes.
And at best, Warner said, that examiner found six signatures to be βinconclusive,β meaning she could not testify that they were a match to the signature on file.
But the judge said this witness found no signs of forgery.
Finally, Warner said, there was no evidence that the vote count was erroneous. So he issued an order confirming the Arizona election, which Biden won with a 10,457-vote edge over Trump.
Federal court case remains to be heard
Fridayβs ruling, however, is not the last word.
Ward, in anticipation of the case going against her, already had announced she plans to seek review by the Arizona Supreme Court.
And a separate lawsuit is playing out in federal court, which includes some of the same claims made here along with allegations of fraud and conspiracy.
That case, set for a hearing Tuesday, also seeks to void the results of the presidential contest.
It includes allegations that the Dominion Software voting equipment used by Maricopa County is unreliable and was programmed to register more votes for Biden than he actually got.
Legislative leaders call for audit but not to change election results
Along the same lines, Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers on Friday called for an independent audit of the software and equipment used by Maricopa County in the just-completed election.
βThere have been questions,β Fann said.
But she told Capitol Media Services it is not their intent to use whatever is found to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election.
In fact, she said nothing in the Republican legislative leadersβ request for the inquiry alleges there are any βirregularitiesβ in the way the election was conducted.
βAt the very least, the confidence in our electoral system has been shaken because of a lot of claims and allegations,β Fann said. βSo our No. 1 goal is to restore the confidence of our voters.β
Bowers specifically rejected calls by the Trump legal team that the Legislature come into session to void the election results, which were formally certified on Monday.
βThe rule of law forbids us to do that,β he said.
In fact, Bowers pointed out, it was the Republican-controlled Legislature that enacted a law three years ago specifically requiring the stateβs electors βto cast their votes for the candidates who received the most votes in the official statewide canvass.β
He said that was done because Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote nationwide in 2016 and some lawmakers feared that electors would refuse to cast the stateβs 11 electoral votes for Trump, who won Arizonaβs race that year.
βAs a conservative Republican, I donβt like the results of the presidential election,β Bowers said in a prepared statement. βBut I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.β