A school board meeting in Arizona’s Deer Valley Unified School District turned deeply controversial when a sitting board member appeared on video to perform a Nazi salute, then spent hours after the meeting publicly comparing her colleague to history’s most notorious dictators.
Board member Kimberly Fisher raised her right arm, said “Heil, heil,” and directed the gesture toward Board President Paul Carver Jr. during a May 26 meeting captured on video.
The confrontation grew out of what began as a routine scheduling disagreement over a planned community study session connected to district boundary discussions.
Fisher took issue with holding the session during daytime hours, contending that afternoon scheduling would effectively shut out working community members from participating.
“The whole point of having a study session with our community is that we can get their input and they can hear our discussions,” Fisher said from the dais.
Carver responded by moving to end the meeting entirely, citing concerns that the conversation had wandered into territory not covered by the posted agenda — a potential breach of Arizona’s Open Meeting Law.
“The reason for calling for the adjournment was simply that, as the question turned into discussion concerning an item that was not on the agenda, the board was moving into an area that could have been considered a violation of Arizona’s Open Meeting Law,” Carver later explained in a Facebook video.
Carver confirmed that Fisher’s salute and verbal outburst came in direct response to his motion to adjourn.
He firmly rejected the notion that his procedural decision gave Fisher any grounds for her reaction.
“The point behind this post is that there’s a lot of noise being made that she may have been justified in making that statement because she felt like I was being a dictator,” Carver said. “I was simply following the rules of the state of Arizona.”
Carver left no ambiguity about where he stood on Fisher’s conduct, stating that “it is never okay to make those gestures and make that statement with those gestures in any environment.”
District leadership wasted no time separating the institution from Fisher’s actions, releasing a statement that drew a sharp line between her behavior and the district’s values.
“The District does not condone, support, or endorse gestures or language associated with hate, discrimination, intimidation or violence in any form,” the statement read. “Such actions do not reflect the mission or vision of Deer Valley Unified School District.”
Officials further emphasized that Fisher’s “views and actions do not reflect and should not be attributed to other board members, staff, other members of the school community or the District.”
The district’s educators association entered the fray with a forceful demand for Fisher’s immediate exit from public office.
“DVEA was horrified and disgusted to see DVUSD Governing Board Member Kimberly Fisher deliver a Nazi salute during the Tuesday, May 26, 2026, board meeting,” said association president Kelley Fisher.
“Any leader who uses a Nazi salute during a School Board meeting is unfit for public service. There is no justification for this behavior. Kimberly Fisher should resign before she does more harm to our students and the community at large,” Kelley Fisher added.
Rather than issuing any apology, Kimberly Fisher went live on Facebook the same evening and escalated her rhetoric against Carver significantly.
“We have been living or operating under virtually a dictatorship for a long time,” Fisher declared to her online audience.
She repeatedly branded Carver a “dictator” and actively encouraged voters to oppose him in any future electoral contest.
As the livestream wound down, Fisher revealed what had been running through her mind during the board meeting itself.
“What was it? Pol Pot, you know, was the most egregious dictator I’ve heard of,” she said. “All I could think of tonight was Hitler.”
Notably, Fisher never once addressed the salute or the words she spoke during the actual meeting.
Carver tackled the question of accountability head-on in a subsequent video, telling constituents that Arizona law strips school boards of any authority to punish elected members.
“I need the community to understand that in the state of Arizona, the school district and the board do not have the ability to discipline board members,” he said.
He described Fisher’s pattern of conduct as “rampant and repetitive” and stamped her behavior as “totally unacceptable and unprofessional.”
Deer Valley Unified School District educates more than 33,000 students spread across northern Maricopa County, serving families in north Phoenix, Glendale, Peoria, Cave Creek, and New River.
