Skip To Main Content

Logo Image

Deer Valley Unified School District

Logo Title

State of the District

Dr. Curtis Finch at his desk

Writing the “State of the District” for the past 26 years has afforded me the opportunity to constantly reflect upon the achievements that can be attained with great people, great structure, and great commitment to excellence. In a world full of outside negative noise from those that are out to destroy public education, the success of the Deer Valley Unified School District (DVUSD) year-after-year reminds the community what is at the heart of public school district education – opportunity. Public schools take ALL students. We joyfully take students where they are at emotionally, physically, and academically and support them to reach past whatever obstacles they are facing. We integrate whatever successes they have had in the past and help them reach their potential by customizing their educational journey to become a successful and contributing citizen. DVUSD works tirelessly to create life-long learners who want to climb the educational mountain of learning together.

When the national trends in educational choice are to separate students from the community into ideological groups, the public educational system is the last foundational principle of our democracy of bringing communities together. We do this by providing unity through opportunity; a chance to climb to the top of the learning mountain with the help of parents, community members, and DVUSD staff.

When mountain climbers get to the most difficult part of the journey, they attach a safety rope, run it back to a support person, and yell, “on belay,” which means, “I’m heading up the cliff so pay attention. I may also need your help – hang tightly onto that safety line!” DVUSD is the community-centered public education machine that provides the necessary support systems for students to take advantage of their opportunity to make it to the top of the K-12 mountain successfully - graduation. DVUSD summarizes this journey in the Portrait of a Graduate –   www.dvusd.org/portraitofagraduate. With the right tools and support, our students will be ready for any mountain they wish to climb in the future.

This past year may have been the greatest on record for student and staff achievements in the 90-year history of DVUSD. When you keep asking the “ol’ timers” if DVUSD has ever done “that” before and they can’t remember anything close to it, you know you’ve had another banner year. There is also no way that I can remember all of the accomplishments and successes, and I’m not even going to try. I find much of my accolade information of our 34,000 students, 42 schools, and the 4,200 staff members from the DVUSD website www.dvusd.org/difference and www.dvusd.org/extraordinary – there is just too much to list. The good news is that the dvusd.org website is full of layers-upon-layers of good information about what DVUSD has to offer students and the fruit of those efforts – excellent school ratings from the state, student academic and club achievements, fine arts awards, and athletic championships. Statewide awards speak louder than words as they are a reflection of the hard work of the community, staff, and students.

Arizona is a unique state. The financial support for public education is the lowest in the nation, number 50, and we’ve been on this march-to-the-bottom since the 1980s. Despite the lack of support, Arizona still performs in the middle section of the national pack. Another variable in the equation of the lack of accountability and transparency for those K-12 educational institutions, consortiums, and individuals who take advantage of the lack of rules for the private, charter, and voucher education systems. A majority of the dollars used at these institutions are public tax-payer resources. Arizona has the least accountable non-public school educational system in the nation with little, to no, oversight, limited accountability, and no signs of any thoughts on accounting for those public dollars in the near future. The system is built on the premise that “choice” is King, but the irony is the non-public school systems just pick and choose their students (it’s the “school’s choice” on whether they want the student or not). When the non-accountable public dollars can be washed in the corporate machines and returned back to the politicians in campaign contributions to write favorable legislation, it won’t be cleaned up any time soon by the legislature.

The Deer Valley Unified School District is also under attack from some Legislative Districts in north-central Maricopa County, all part of the anti-public education movement started nationally in the last decade. The aim is to take-over public governmental bodies, including public education school boards, and dismantle these foundational components of our democracy. Misinformation is at the key of their game plan. The radical movement is all about creating doubt with your local school district and government. This past calendar year saw DVUSD lose two of its foundational economic variables in its Bond and Override, which had been in place for the past 30 years. This will create a financial burden on DVUSD in a rapid-expanding economic zone.

The research on local financial support says when the local schools decline, crime goes up, property values go down, and the workforce of the future doesn’t get trained. DVUSD will begin the three-year annual removal of $11 million from the budget over the next three years until the Override’s $33 million is removed from the budget. The Override paid for the salary of 8% of all staff, all-day Kindergarten, lower class-size maintenance, student-supports such as counselors, social workers, aides, etc. for student learning, and student activities such as choir, band, dance, fine arts, physical education, athletics. The loss of the 2024 Bond will remove additional access to $175 million of replacement, repair, and maintenance of the current facilities, busses, white-fleet, and student performance areas. The future of the next Bond and Override community request has not been determined, but the economic starvation of DVUSD will have negative community impact over time.

Despite the community and state funding variables stacked against DVUSD, we had our best year yet. How does this happen? The short answer is quality people. Since 85% of all school budgets across the nation are people, if DVUSD can spend its limited resources in a strategic manner, focus on academic excellence provided by the five-year Strategic Plan  – www.dvusd.org/strategicplan, correctly put the right staff on the “Good-to Great” bus and in the right seat, and a promote a positive learning and working environment, we can make a banner attempt of staying on top of the educational mountain in 2025.

The district’s accolades have to start with the continuation of Forbes ranking DVUSD as one of the top businesses to work for in the nation and state. We’ve received the Arizona top Forbes award five years in a row and the national recognition back-to-back in 2022 and 2023. DVUSD is also on pace to receive Ambassador recognition for our national-leading focus on a successful Professional Learning Community (PLC) process. We are one of the 11 large K-12 public school PLC Model Districts in the nation. PLC is not a program, but it is a process with which we maintain our excellent culture, teaching, and learning environments. These results are manifested in our largest number of “A” rated schools at 27, 35 of 42 schools being “A” or “B” rated, and over 50% of our schools earning the coveted A+ School Excellence banner. DVUSD is also one of the founding members of the Department of Education’s Project Momentum schools in Arizona started by Governor Ducey several years ago. We now lead other school districts around the county, state, nation, and world on how successful districts accomplish so much with so little.

When your economic resources are limited, public school districts must be creative in solving problems. DVUSD’s location, excellent working culture, outstanding professional development, and commitment to mentoring staff to success, slows down the impact of the national teacher and staff shortages. The DVUSD Teacher Prep program now employs over 110 teachers who are making an impact in our classrooms every day. We now offer free training for bus driving at DVUSD, becoming a support staff member, and technical mentoring and training for many of our trade positions. To learn more about the job opportunities at DVUSD, go to www.dvusd.org/joindvusd .

Although the awards are too many to list from this past year, some unique ones are worth shining the light on. This is the first year for DVUSD to receive an “A” district-wide rating since the inception of the new state ranking system two years ago. For the first time in DVUSD’s history, DVUSD had two teachers awarded the Ambassadors for Excellence for being in the group of top five teachers in the state. Both of the DVUSD teachers hail from Boulder Creek High School and both are from the same social studies department – Emmett Burnton and Ryan Donovan. Mr. Burnton ended up taking home the top title as Arizona’s Teacher of the Year.

Other unique DVUSD teacher/staff awards in 2024 were two additional Nationally Board Certified teachers and three re-certifications, Mandy Hayes of Copper Creek Elementary receiving the Silver Apple Award, 13 Deer Valley Education Foundation DVUSD’s Teacher and Rookie of the Year Awards, Heidi Moya and Jeff Samaniego of Mountain Ridge High receiving the Association for Career & Technical Education Teacher Community Service Award, Dennis Darre receiving the Arizona Advocate of the Year Award from the Arizona’s School Counselors Association, Diamond Canyon Principal Tara LeCount receiving the Maricopa County School Superintendent’s Office Exemplary Award, Jamie Hood, the Principal of Paseo Hills School, achieving the DVSUD Principal of the Year.

Other state-wide awards brought recognition to DVUSD’s students and staff. In the Superintendent’s Division, Sheila Taylor and Dr. Finch received the Arizona Secretary of the Year and Large-District Superintendent of the Year respectfully from the Arizona’s School Administrators Association and the Arizona School Board Association. The students of DVUSD received over 70 Arizona State Titles in athletics, fine arts, and Career & Technical Education – the most in our history. Another unique feat not completed before was a sweep of our five high schools all receiving an “A” rating, all five marching bands reaching the finals of the ABODA state competition, and 50% of the State Marching Band Titles being won by DVUSD schools – Mountain Ridge and Barry Goldwater High School. This feat doesn’t happen without a commitment to the fine arts throughout the system. Reminder again: to see an entire list of the hundreds of our staff and student accomplishments in a detailed 47-page document, go to www.dvusd.org/extraordinary. You won’t believe it until you read it for yourself. I marvel every time I see the list of accolades and keep saying, every year, “we’ll never beat this list next year!” And then, we do!

Since the inception of school letter grades in 2012, 38 of 42 DVUSD schools have received an “A” rating; we are a continuous improvement district that always is reaching higher. The future of the DVUSD accent to get to the very top of the educational mountain is bright, but challenging. The economic forecast for the top of the mountain is cloudy at the moment. We remain hopeful that the community will prioritize the importance of public education in the future.

 DVUSD will continue to train students towards DVUSD’s Vision of “graduating life-long learners who will successfully compete, lead, and positively impact the world and the Mission of providing “extraordinary educational opportunities to every learner.”  In summary, the Deer Valley Unified School District exists to provide the best educational opportunities for students. Our 90-year track record of excellence in academics, athletics, fine arts speak for itself but staying near the top of the educational mountain is harder than climbing it. “On Belay!” Let’s go and keeping climbing this educational mountain together to the very, very, top, obstacles and all!

Curt Finch, PhD

Superintendent
Deer Valley Unified School District

Download a copy of the 2025 DVUSD State of the District