Things that are Ponderous in DVUSD

Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Secular Activist Lady™

It’s the second week of September, Secular Fam, so you know what that means! This Secular Activist Lady™ is BOOKED with school board meetings. I really wish that I could figure out how to clone myself because three of Maricopa County’s noisiest districts meet on the same Tuesday every month: Deer Valley (DVUSD), Mesa (MPS), and Scottsdale (SUSD).

I’d like to give a shout out to the Scottsdale Freedom to Learn group for recapping those meetings. If you want to stay informed about SUSD, be sure to subscribe to their newsletter. 

If you’re interested in providing updates about MPS (or any school district, really), let us know and we’ll be sure to publish your summary! 

Thank you to everyone who upgraded their subscriptions to our Substack last week to a PAID status. Your support helps us to be able to not only cover these meetings, but to also support our legal team so they can file complaints when they receive reports of violations of the First Amendment. 

So without any further adieu, let’s get right to it!

As always, the meeting opened with the standard stuff: Pledge, moment of silence, etc. And here I’d like to share the public comments from the Casa Grande (CGUHSD) meeting earlier this month. 

I don’t have the bandwidth to attend these meetings every month, but trust and believe, this district is on my radar, and we recently enlisted a volunteer to monitor their meetings (YAY!). 

The public comments during the DVUSD meeting were pretty standard. A parent requested solutions for the chaotic pick up and drop off at her child’s school. The parents concerned about bullying were back and citing state statute and district policies. Another public speaker wanted to talk about Citizenship Day (September 17). It reminded me of a simpler time when routine topics dominated this portion of school board meetings instead of calls for bigotry or the spouting of conspiracy theories. 

Next up was a finance report, and VP Kim Fisher asserted that in the past, they received enrollment reports weekly for the first 100 days. It’s painfully obvious that VP Fisher doesn’t meet with Superintendent Finch before meetings because she prefers these little “gotcha” moments. And of course, Dr. Finch was like, “no problem, we can get it to you.”

And really, this is an ongoing theme with VP Fisher. She seems to refuse to prepare for meetings or meet with Dr. Finch, so when the meeting day arrives, she’s unprepared and/or making baseless accusations about the intentions of DVUSD staff and her board colleagues. 

There was a discussion about student clubs and how they’re funded, and another discussion about switching sub-contractors on a project to save the district money. And folks, these are such benign agenda items, where if Fisher had ANY questions, all she had to do was meet with district administrators before the board meeting to get her answers. 

However, she seems to enjoy excruciatingly long meetings, having the spotlight for the majority of the meeting, and the sound of her own voice. It also appears that she likes to try to act as if she’s an expert on…well…everything. 

Tax filings? She knows everything. Sub-contractors? She knows everything. Student club funding? She knows everything. Funding sources? She knows everything. Transportation? She knows everything.

Except she totally doesn’t. Watching the discussion about agenda item 6C caused me to lose several many brain cells. 

And here we need to have a quick history lesson about capital funding of public schools. Arizona has made more budget cuts to public education than any other state — to the tune of $4.56B since 2008. There is something called District Additional Assistance (DAA); the phrase itself was coined politically to act as if it is funding “on top of” what districts already receive.  DAA has been shorted by about $2B since 2009. While districts can apply for DAA, because of all these cuts, projects rarely get funded, and districts have to use bond money to make repairs.

An organization that approves these funding requests, once called the School Facilities Bureau (SFB), has now changed to the School Facilities Division (SFD). Therefore, an already-approved request for funding needed to be reapproved to account for that change, and because the project had moved into the design phase.

Neither VP Fisher nor President Paperman understood this. VP Fisher voted against it. 

The next agenda item was a “preview” item about employee and parent satisfaction surveys (AGAIN). Remember, Fisher created a SUPER SCIENTIFIC SURVEY to “prove” that everyone in the district is wildly unhappy (they’re not). 

There was one speaker to address this agenda item. She was a district employee, voter, and taxpayer. She said that she sent an email to the board to express her opposition to spending her tax dollars on an outside firm. She said that a couple of board members responded and that one replied all, meaning it could be a potential violation of open meeting law (OML) since she essentially created a virtual quorum, which is a big no-no. 

In this “reply all” email, the board member responded saying “I’m am [sic] sorry that you have been misinformed. There is no integrity in our surveys and we operate outside of the law as often as possible so long as it meets the agenda being pushed.” Gee, I wonder which board member did that? 

After the member of the public spilled all that tea, Board Member Ordway, who was phoning in due to illness, asked the district data guy how these accusations of skewing results made him feel. He replied that it hurts his feelings - that he works really hard to be accurate with his data. He gave examples of how they keep these surveys anonymous. 

This just made me sad, y’all. Like, if you’ve ever known a data person, they LIVE to break down the data. When he said their accusations and mistrust hurt his feelings, it made me wonder how many qualified candidates for roles from bus driver to data guru think twice before applying to districts with dysfunctional school board members.

The staff retention crisis in Arizona isn’t just for teachers anymore, and these radical board members and legislators are to blame. 

VP Fisher asserted that Arizona Revised Statute (ARS) §15-341, Section 39a-c dictates that surveys must be conducted by external agencies, and Board Member Carver asked that leadership ask legal counsel if they are, in fact, violating state statute. 

Stay tuned…

The Meeting ended with Superintendent and Board Member reports. The Arizona School Board Association (ASBA) Law Conference was last weekend, and every member from the DVUSD governing board attended. Board Member Simacek shared some of the things she learned from the conference, including the importance of working together as board members so they can best serve students and families. She AGAIN had to bring up the matter of VP Fisher using social media to air grievances. 

I’m sure Fisher will totally stop being an online bully now. 

Board Member Simacek also called out VP Fisher for using scripture to disparage anyone who disagrees with her. Just so happens that the scripture she has been posting is Luke 17:2, which says “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.” 

Look familiar? That’s because it’s all the rage right now in evangelical extremist circles.

Former Peoria (PUSD) Board Member, Rebecca Hill read it from the dais last spring, and I’ve seen members of the public use this biblical scripture to disparage anyone who supports the LGBTQ community. 

These folks aren’t Christian, y’all. They’re Christian nationalists. And they twist and turn scripture to fit their narrow worldview. 

In fact, right after the meeting VP Fisher decided to turn her ire on me (my new nickname is “secular AZ nut Job” {sic} 🤣), Secular AZ, and any Christian who believes in the separation of church and state. She’s the reason why people say “there ain’t no hate like Christian love.”

Next, Board Members Carver and Ordway also shared how much they learned and acted as the public servants they were elected to be. Of course, the meeting ended with Paperman and Fisher spouting their distrust of everything and everyone, as per usual, and all I could think is that the next time these two request to attend a training, the board should vote against it. 

Like, if the district is footing the bill for a professional development training and these two refuse to believe the information coming from legal and educational experts at that training, then don’t let them go. 

Better yet, replace them next year with folks who actually do want to learn, grow, and work together to serve students and families. 

These DVUSD meetings are particularly tedious, y’all. The length of the meetings, the willful ignorance, and the lack of professionalism from two members just make it a miserable experience. Hats off to the board members who take their roles seriously, and REALLY thanks to all the teachers and staff that show up and are frequently on the receiving end of their attacks. 

I really hope these dedicated public servants won’t have to put up with these toxic working conditions after November 2024, but that’s up to all of us…

And speaking of all of us, if you haven’t yet joined Secular AZ, now is a great time! Not only will you be joining a growing group of Arizonans who care about the separation of church and state, you’ll also get your pick of some special Secular AZ swag AND get in the door before membership rates increase next year.