A Deer Valley Unified School District board member raised her right arm and said "Heil, heil" during a public meeting on May 26, directing the gesture at the board president during a dispute over scheduling, and then doubled down hours later on a Facebook livestream by comparing his leadership to Hitler's.
Kimberly Fisher, a board member in the northern Maricopa County district that serves more than 33,000 students, made the gesture during a disagreement with Board President Paul Carver Jr. over when to hold a community study session related to district boundary discussions. The incident has drawn condemnation from district officials and the local teachers' union, both of which have called for Fisher's resignation.
The dispute itself was procedural. Fisher objected to scheduling the community session during afternoon hours, arguing parents would be unable to attend. Carver moved to adjourn the meeting, citing a potential violation of Arizona's Open Meeting Law because the discussion had drifted to an item not on the posted agenda. That's when Fisher raised her arm and made the remark.
Fisher did not stop at the gesture. Hours after the meeting, she went on Facebook Live and escalated her rhetoric. She called Carver "a dictator" and claimed the board had been "living or operating under virtually a dictatorship for a long time." Then she went further.
As Fox News Digital reported, Fisher said during the livestream:
"What was it? Pol Pot, you know, was the most egregious dictator I've heard of. All I could think of tonight was Hitler."
She did not directly address the salute or the "Heil, heil" remark during the livestream.
Fox News Digital reached out to Fisher for comment. No response was reported.
Carver responded in a series of Facebook videos. He explained his decision to adjourn in straightforward terms, framing it as compliance with state law rather than an exercise of unchecked authority.
"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."
He also addressed Fisher's characterization of him as a dictator head-on, saying the gesture was indefensible regardless of the underlying disagreement.
"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. I was simply following the rules of the state of Arizona."
Carver called Fisher's behavior "rampant and repetitive" and "totally unacceptable and unprofessional." He stated plainly: "It is never okay to make those gestures and make that statement with those gestures in any environment."
The New York Post reported that Carver is a Marine veteran who has served as board president since 2023 and is currently running in the Republican primary for Arizona House District 2. Fisher has served on the board since 2021 and has been a parent in the district for 24 years.
The Deer Valley Unified School District issued a formal statement distancing itself from Fisher's conduct:
"The District does not condone, support, or endorse gestures or language associated with hate, discrimination, intimidation or violence in any form. Such actions do not reflect the mission or vision of Deer Valley Unified School District."
The district added 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 statement was unambiguous, but it stopped short of any disciplinary action, because Arizona law apparently ties the board's hands.
In a separate video, Carver told the community directly: "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." That legal gap leaves voters, not the board, as the only check on Fisher's conduct.
The Deer Valley Educators Association was less measured. Its president, Kelley Fisher, no relation to the board member, issued a blistering statement:
"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. 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."
The incident in Deer Valley is the kind of local-government meltdown that corrodes public trust in institutions Americans depend on. School boards exist to serve students and families. When an elected member turns a scheduling dispute into a spectacle involving Nazi imagery, she hasn't made a bold stand against tyranny. She's made the entire board look unserious.
Fisher's stated concern, that an afternoon session would prevent working parents from participating, is a legitimate point. Parents deserve a seat at the table when boundary changes are on the line. But whatever merit that argument carried evaporated the moment she raised her arm and invoked the Third Reich. No policy disagreement, however valid, justifies that kind of conduct from a public official entrusted with the education of 33,000 children.
The broader pattern is familiar. Elected officials at every level, from Brooklyn party bosses caught running a dead man on a ballot petition to state-level figures who promise one thing and deliver another, increasingly treat public office as a platform for personal grievance rather than public service.
Fisher's comparison of a board president following Arizona's Open Meeting Law to Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler is not just offensive. It is a fundamental failure of proportion and judgment. Carver cited a specific statute. Fisher responded with a salute and a dictator comparison. Those two responses do not occupy the same moral universe.
The fact that Arizona law prevents the board from disciplining its own members makes the situation worse, not better. It means the only remedy is Fisher's conscience, or the voters. Neither has delivered accountability yet.
Officials who abuse their positions through reckless conduct are not confined to one party or one level of government. Virginia's governor recently ousted a university rector under controversial circumstances, and political figures across the spectrum have faced growing scrutiny for conduct that falls below the basic standard voters expect.
Deer Valley's district spans communities across north Phoenix, Glendale, Peoria, Cave Creek, and New River. Families in those communities send their children to schools governed by this board. They deserve board members who can disagree, even sharply, without resorting to gestures that trivialize the murder of millions.
Fisher has not responded to calls for her resignation. She has not addressed the salute directly. And under Arizona law, the board cannot force her out. That leaves the parents and voters of northern Maricopa County holding the bag for a board member who, by all available evidence, sees no problem with what she did.
Accountability in a republic runs from the bottom up. When officials at the highest levels of government step down over matters of principle or political reality, voters notice. When a local board member clings to her seat after invoking Hitler over a scheduling dispute, voters should notice that too.
If Fisher won't resign, the voters of Deer Valley will eventually get their say. The question is whether they'll remember what she did, or whether the next outrage will have already buried this one.
