Episode 3: Tempe’s blueprint for schools, safety, and city leadership

Cactus Crossfire
1 day ago
3 min read

Tempe is one of those cities that forces you to get creative. You cannot just sprawl outward forever. You are landlocked, sitting in the middle of everything, and if you want to grow, you have to grow smarter.

That is why this episode matters.

We sat down with Councilwoman Berdetta Hodge from Tempe, Arizona, to talk about what it looks like when someone leads from both sides of the pipeline: the school board and the city council.

Councilwoman Berdetta Hodge is not just a policymaker, she is a Tempe lifer. She grew up in the city, went through local public schools, and has spent years showing up for the community. In 2022, she made history as the first African American woman elected to the Tempe City Council. Before that, she also broke ground as the first African American woman elected to public office in Tempe through her service on the Tempe Union High School District Governing Board.

Her foundation is education. She started on the Tempe Union High School District governing board and later ran for city council because she saw something most people miss. Schools do not operate in a vacuum. Cities shape what schools can do, what students can access, and what pathways exist after graduation.

Tempe Drive: a real K through career pathway

One of the biggest initiatives she shared is Tempe Drive, a collaboration between multiple school districts, Arizona State University, and the City of Tempe. The goal is simple but ambitious: make the transition from elementary to high school to college or workforce smoother and more intentional. If you want young people to stay in Tempe, build in Tempe, and lead in Tempe, you cannot just talk about opportunity. You have to design it.

Safety is not just physical

Berdetta also walked us through why Tempe became the second city in the country to adopt Sandy Hook Promise at the city level. The point is not just physical security. It is emotional safety, prevention, and making sure schools have the resources to be proactive instead of reactive.

And when youth violence headlines hit close to home, she did not wait for someone else to act. She pushed a brass knuckles ordinance to outlaw them in Tempe after seeing how real the damage can be.

Google Fiber and the future of learning

We also got into something that sounds like a tech issue but is really an equity issue: internet infrastructure. Berdetta shared that Tempe is in the final stages of bringing Google Fiber to the city, with benefits for businesses, neighborhoods, and schools.

When classrooms run on laptops and platforms, connectivity becomes part of the learning environment. If the internet fails, learning fails.

Homelessness and the hard work of trust

On homelessness, Berdetta’s approach is not about criminalizing people. It is about building trust and connecting people to services. Tempe’s park rangers, paired with CARE 7 and the HOPE team, are designed to deescalate and engage, not just push people from one corner to another. She also said the quiet part out loud: you can care deeply and still need rules that protect children walking through parks to school and protect unsheltered people from being victimized.

Leadership that refuses the easy labels

As an African American woman and a mother of African American sons, Councilwoman Berdetta Hodge addressed the expectation that she should be anti police. She rejects that binary. Her focus is safety and trust, and she highlighted programs that bring officers into schools to mentor and build relationships.

This is what real local leadership looks like. Not slogans. Not purity tests. Actual systems, actual partnerships, and actual accountability.

If you care about how cities can do better on schools, safety, infrastructure, and homelessness, this is the conversation.