published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

The researcher/writer of this treatise has used qualitatively based data to develop a better understanding of the perceptions of college readiness initiatives in three public school districts in the service area of a community college in South Texas. The researcher has also used these methods to understand the perceptions of participants in a community based parental outreach program about the subject of college readiness. More specifically, through the use interviews with public school district superintendents, focus groups with educational professionals in the corresponding school districts, and similar focus group interviews with the parent/facilitators in the outreach group; critical issues, incidents, and events have been identified to improve and better inform the processes of college readiness initiatives for the college. The end product of this treatise will help both the researcher/practitioner and the leadership of the college improve their educational service to the community, and add new voices to the character of this service. The researcher as an outsider to the language and culture of the region, has also reflected on his positionality and professional growth within this community through these processes. / text

Irrigated agriculture's future in central Arizona is dependent upon the availability of two relatively fixed and limited resources: land and water. Adjustments within the agricultural sector will flow directly from, or in response to, changes in the availability and/or costs of these production factors. This study explores the agricultural use of these two factors of production and adjustments that will follow from their changing availability and cost over a 53-year period from 1967 to 2020. The area of central Arizona under study encompasses two irrigation districts-- the Salt River Project (SRP) and the Roosevelt Water Conservation District (RWCD). A structural model of the agricultural sector was synthesized from a survey of 102 operating farms in the study area. Models of four farm sizes were employed in a linear programming analysis to depict economies of scale. All four models were used to represent SRP farms, while two were used to represent RWCD farms. These farm models were held constant throughout the projection period, except for specified changes in the number of acres represented by each model (a decrease in land availability) in the SRP and the increasing water cost with which they are confronted in the RWCD. All other changes and/or adjustments wIthin agriculture are, in this analysis, dependent upon these land availability and water cost factors. Agricultural land and irrigation district surface and groundwater availability are considered factors exogenous to the agricultural sector. In the SRP, land and its appurtenant water rights have been and will continue over the projection period to flow into the urban-industrial sector at the expense of the agricultural sector. The cost of obtaining groundwater will increase over the projection period as the groundwater table declines. This increasing cost of groundwater will affect adjustments in agriculture in the SRP only slightly since water is provided to agriculture primarily through a user's cooperative which has excess electrical power revenues available to subsidize water prices to farmers. Increasing water costs in the RWCD will have a considerable affect on adjustments in agriculture because of the absence of revenue from any source to subsidize the cost of obtaining groundwater. Land availability is assumed constant in this district and, therefore, is of no significance in adjustments that occur over the projection period. Acreages of crops producing high values per acre-foot of water used are not affected by projected decreases in cropland and/or increases in water costs. Adjustments occurring within agriculture over the projection period take place in the acreages of those crops which produce a low net return per acre-foot of water used. As land availability decreases and/or water costs increase over the projection period, cropped acreage, total water use, and net revenue over variable production costs decline. The changes are not proportional since adjustments take place in the acreage of those crops which produce low values per acre and per acre-foot of water used. In the SRP, cropped acreage is projected to decrease 76 percent, total water use to decrease 71 percent, and net revenue over variable production costs to fall approximately 50 percent due largely to continuous transfer of land and water out of agriculture. Projected declines in cropped acreage in the RWCD are 50 percent, total water use decreases 45 percent and net revenue over variable production costs falls 21 percent due entirely to increasing cost of water. A second phase of this analysis presents a demand function for irrigation water in each district over price ranges from zero dollars per acre-foot to those at which no water would be demanded. In the SRP, positive price and quantity relationships were found to exist from a price of $248 per acre-foot at which quantity would be zero, to a quantity of 816,873 acre-feet demanded at a zero price. Price and quantity relationships in the RWCD ranged from zero quantity demanded at a price of $113.36 per acre-foot to a quantity of 130,338 acre-feet at a zero price. A final section of this study treats various possible sources, uses, and values of additional water to agriculture in each irrigation district over the projection period.

This study examines the effects of educational submarkets -- schools and districts -- on house prices in the Tucson region. The supposition that homebuyers will pay more to live in a better school district or school attendance area is examined, with the quality of education measured by per-student expenditures and academic achievement. Traditional single-market modeling of the housing market finds that education submarkets have a small but significant effect on housing price. Further modeling, taking explicit account of the spatial nature of the housing market, suggests that in the single-market approach, education submarkets act as proxies for other neighborhood effects and variables omitted from the model. Incorporating the unique location coordinates of the properties and allowing marginal attribute- and location-effects to vary across geographic space in a trend surface approach produces more robust model results and allows the educational submarket effects to be isolated. The results suggest that school districts have a small but significant price effect even after a fluid price surface has been developed, but that intra-district variation remains. These price effects have some relationship with district quality as measured by academic achievement, but the housing market does not reward per-student expenditures. At the intra-district level, middle school quality does not appear to have a significant effect on housing price, at least in the Tucson Unified School District. However, the trend surface approach still proves to be a useful methodology for modeling small, local-scale variations. The use of polynomial expansion and spatial- attribute variable interactions is successful: problems of variable omission are diminished, spatially autocorrelated error terms are reduced and removed, effects of multicollinearity are minimized, and the effects of the educational submarkets may be examined in isolation.

No description available.

This dissertation examines the impact of the 1992 Georgia Tort Claims Act on educators in court decisions involving liability cases against Georgia school districts and/ or their respective employees. By examining pertinent court cases in which Georgia educators were, for the first time, subjected to potential litigation, the researcher outlines circumstances in which educators can and should be held liable for their actions. Additionally, the researcher analyzes the Tort Claims Acts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi as well. This analysis allows the researcher to contrast the types of litigious actions that educators in each of these states are held liable. Findings include the types of actions in which educators in each of the respective states are subject to liability. Case study analysis of randomly selected court cases involving tort liability, provides the infrastructure for in-depth research allowing the following questions to be addressed: (1) How have Georgia courts interpreted the Georgia Tort Claims Act in litigation against school personnel and school districts? (2) How do tort liability rulings, involving school personnel or districts, in other states within the United States compare with similar cases filed in Georgia since 1992? The Georgia Tort Claim Act of 1992 propelled an array of circumstances in which educational entities would be held liable for their actions. This research clearly explains the types of actions in which educators in the state of Georgia are subject to suit and to what degree they are subsequently held liable. Case study research also uncovered specific areas in which Georgia educators can be held liable. Specific research involving actions deemed either ministerial or discretionary are detailed specifically through case analysis. Additionally, the degree to which liability insurance provides protection for educational entities or their respective employees is also addressed in this research in order that state-by-state comparisons can be understood.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

Call number: LD2668 .P7 1973 O26

No description available.