John Davenport carries a pair of dice decorations from a storage room into the Catalina Foothills High School gym for the seniors' Grad Night party, which took place May 18. Parents decorate the gym as a surprise for the seniors each year. The theme this year was "007 James Bond."

James S. Wood / Arizona Daily Star

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Catalina Foothills High School students could get bigger portions at lunchtime and be able to sell candy during fundraisers as the district considers changes in its wellness policy.

Just nine months after the policy was implemented, the district recently received board approval to look into ways to satisfy students who have complained about food choices in the cafeteria and the inability to sell candy during fundraisers.

The revised policy would eliminate limits on portion sizes for the high school, said Jody Brase, Orange Grove Middle School assistant principal and head of the district wellness committee.

She said increasing portion sizes for sandwiches and other items for sale would not affect the nutritional value of the food. Any items sold in the cafeteria would still have to adhere to the fat, calorie and other nutritional guidelines in the policy.

"We realized bigger portions are for bigger bodies," Brase said.

The state is working on a nutrition policy for high school students, Brase said, that could go into effect by 2009.

The board could review the policy's revised language as early as June. If approved, the policy would go into effect for the next school year.

Mesquite Elementary became the messiest school in the Vail Unified School District last week.

The school's walkways were coated with egg yolks on May 17, the result of an experiment to help kids learn more about the properties of gravity and how physics affects an object.

Teacher Trace Lowe came up with the idea of dropping eggs from the tops of school buildings about five years ago as a way to help students learn about the laws of nature.

"They always have fun doing this," he said.

The children created small containers made of metal, cardboard and plastic and put eggs inside them. Others wrapped the eggs inside food, such as lettuce, marshmallows and peanut butter. Teachers dropped the eggs from a roof 17 feet high, and parents checked the containers for any broken eggs. The ones protected by food were less likely to break.

"I was kind of hoping to get everyone's attention, for the peanut butter to splatter all over the place," said Andrew Rizk, after discovering that his egg survived the fall.

With the federal and state governments mandating more stringent science learning in schools, and with a science subsection on next year's AIMS test, Lowe said students need to get more excited about science. The best way to do that, he said, is by giving them plenty of hands-on experiments that complement classroom instruction.

"Now that science is on AIMS, that hands-on activity helps drive home the info they learn in the book," Lowe said.

Tucson Electric Power crews last week completed removal of 54 poles along a scenic stretch of Old Spanish Trail as part of the Rocking K South development project.

Diamond Ventures, developer of the Rocking K, paid $397,000 to remove the poles from a stretch of Old Spanish Trail that bounds the Rocking K, said Mary Davis, a Diamond Ventures spokeswoman.

Last month, the company announced its plans to build 3,223 homes on 2,047 acres on a triangular area south of Old Spanish Trail and west of Camino Loma Alta, in the heart of the Rincon Valley.

The poles were removed along a stretch of Old Spanish Trail from the Black Angus Ranch, just east of the Rincon Creek General Store, to the eastern edge of the Rocking K development, near Academy Village.

The power line was buried along that stretch, Davis said.

Oro Valley government employees can now appeal disciplinary actions such as suspensions to an independent administrative review officer, rather than a multimember board.

Oro Valley's Town Council last week approved a new personnel policy that includes eliminating the town's Grievance Review Board, a seven-member group with a role similar to Marana's Personnel Action Review Board, Pima County's Merit Commission and the city of Tucson's Civil Service Commission.

The commissions can reverse disciplinary actions and return back pay.

Under the new policy, disciplined Oro Valley employees may appeal a decision via a three-step process: a written complaint to the department head, an appeal to the assistant town manager and an outside review by an administrative review officer, who will then make a recommendation to the town manager for his final decision.

The employee could choose a review officer out of a list of five people trained to administer legal hearings such as former judges, attorneys or arbitrators.

The town tries to resolve disciplined employees' complaints as soon as possible, so they rarely escalate to the upper appeal level, said Sandra Abbey, human resources director.

Employees went to the Grievance Review Board on an average of once every two to three years.

But when they did, the proceedings involved lawyers more frequently than was intended, practically turning the internal board hearings into legal proceedings — something the board members were not trained to handle, she said.

The board consisted of two citizen volunteers and five town employees.

Oro Valley's Town Council will next month decide whether Tucson Electric Power Co. should place another row of overhead power lines along West Tangerine Road or pay to bury them.

The utility requested a conditional use permit to place 21 poles along Tangerine between North La Cholla Boulevard and North La Cañada Drive to relieve overloaded circuits.

It is the second time in recent months that such a request has come before the Town Council.

Current town law requires all new utility lines be underground.

In early April, the Town Council granted TEP a permit to use overhead lines to replace existing ones along the west side of La Cholla between West Owl Head Place and West Lambert Lane and to replace poles on Lucero Road, east of La Cholla.

But approving TEP's recent request would allow two parallel rows of overhead lines along the roadway — not just one because there's already a row of overhead power lines there.

Under the request, the company would fully pay for the new line — about $260,000 — and it would remain overhead until after Tangerine Road is widened sometime after 2012. Lawrence Lucero, TEP's manager of government affairs, said the option is the "most practical solution" because the line would otherwise have to be rebuilt after the widening.