Arizona Structures is expanding its expertise into Arcadia, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley.

The city of Phoenix is looking for more residents to sign up for a pilot program that will help keep less green organic materials out of landfills and could save the city money.

Desert Vista High School students this week presented a near-complete application for teacher evaluations to be rolled out in the fall, a project more than a year in the making.

Since her sister’s health took a drastic downturn this past February, Mountain Pointe High School teacher Donna Sampanes is organizing a blood drive at the school this weekend in an effort to help her sibling.

A survey shows U.S. home prices rose 10.5 percent in March compared with a year ago, the biggest gain since March 2006.

"Had I known about the crime problems around Arizona State University I would have never let Kyleigh move to Tempe.” Those are the words of Karen Montenegro, the mother of murdered ASU student Kyleigh Sousa.

The greens at Starfire Golf Club just got a whole lot greener with the implementation of Waste Management’s total recycling program. Starfire Golf Club is Scottsdale’s first golf public course to implement the program as part of its effort to go green and increase recycling and composting initiatives. Starfire Golf Club launched the program as the city’s first golf course recycling initiative on April 22 in commemoration of Earth Day.

It's not a big breakthrough.

Hard rocker Tom Keifer would be among the first to say that life doesn’t go as planned. The long-time musician, best known for his lead role in the band Cinderella, released his first solo album – ”The Way Life Goes” – April 30 after a 10-year process and a long struggle with partial vocal chord paralysis — the ruination of many music careers.

Out on the grass between classroom buildings and the baseball field at Kyrene Centennial Middle School, a group of 7th graders were measuring indoor temperatures of their model homes for an urban heat island project last week.

If you’re just a casual swimmer, you probably don’t have to adjust your diet before jumping in. But that’s not the case with competitive swimmers, who must constantly watch what they eat and drink. You can learn a lot from swimmers’ consumption patterns — particularly if you’re an investor.

Phoenix Conservatory of Music received a three-year $120,000 grant to support its City Music Program from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. The Phoenix Conservatory of Music’s City Music Program is a free college preparatory program for grades 4-12.

I would like to respond to a recent guest column, “SRP needs to provide vision and advance energy efficiency,” which appeared in this newspaper (March 29). The author makes inaccurate assertions regarding the ability of customers and stakeholders to provide meaningful input to SRP’s resource plan and more generally questions our commitment to sustainable resources.

Students in Kevin Willis’ brief calculus class are learning more than just numbers this year.

Week of April 2-8

Three high school students submitted three big ideas to the Ahwatukee Chamber Charity Foundation with hopes of being selected for a brand new college scholarship. On Wednesday the foundation presented a $4,000 scholarship to Spencer Elliott of Mountain Pointe High School, and a $500 scholarship to Josh Greene and Emily Pawlik, both Desert Vista students.

Next week, we observe Earth Day. First celebrated in 1970, Earth Day has grown into an international movement whose goal is to raise awareness of the need to take action to sustain a healthy, sustainable environment. You can do your part through recycling and other measures, but you can also apply some of the lessons of Earth Day to your financial situation — and, in particular, to your approach to investing.

The Montessori Exploratory Committee has moved forward in its year-long proposal to build a stand-alone Montessori high school within Tempe Union, gaining added support from parents.

Most people know what it’s like to pull up a chair at a family reunion or holiday meal, but not many have tucked their toes under the table at a community harvest feast. Several local art and community organizations are hoping to change that with Saturday’s “Feast on the Street” in downtown Phoenix.

The 3-year-old resource center in Tempe serving Ahwatukee families is in need of food donations for April.

The decision to postpone college for a year has worked out just fine for Robbie Mathers.

Recently deciding to collaborate with Canon in a Digital University partnership is just one of the steps Arizona State University is taking to maintain its goals to achieve higher sustainability. Implementing “Sustainable Printing” has decreased its number of printers by 32 percent, but is still easily accessible for students.

For an event usually drawing nearly 400 parents, education and business leaders, Desert Garden Montessori in Ahwatukee Foothills encourages residents to learn more about the school.

In a week when North Korea posted a homemade video showing the U.S. Capitol building being destroyed by a missile, what more logical response could Hollywood offer than a macho thriller about a Secret Service agent who takes on North Korean terrorists who attack the White House? The first of two similarly themed action dramas set for this year ("White House Down" arrives in June), "Olympus Has Fallen" will put to the test the question of whether American audiences are ready, 12 years after 9-11, to watch, strictly as disposable popcorn entertainment, a film in which the United States and some of its most prominent landmarks are devastated by foreign terrorists.

With April being Water Awareness Month, March turned out to be a pretty good time to start focusing on saving water when Salt River Project hosted its sixth annual Water Conservation Expo at the SRP PERA Club in Tempe.