Nazi salute made by school board member during meeting

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Heil! Heil!

[00:00:02]>> Yeah, uh you know, not appropriate pretty much anywhere these days. So, this action this these words sparking outrage in the Deer Valley community.

[00:00:10]School board member gesturing with a Nazi salute. This is 12 News at 4. I'm Troy Hayden.

[00:00:16]>> And I'm Tram Mai. Our Shawn Rice sought comment from the woman in that video who you just saw. And Shawn, she says she did that because the board president was being like a dictator?

[00:00:26]>> Yeah, that's right. In a video statement on Kimberly Fisher's Facebook page, she says and explained why she did this. She did not offer any kind of apology.

[00:00:35]Instead, she doubled down really explaining that she felt as though the board president in this meeting earlier this week was a dictator. That was board president Paul Carver. He tells me that no matter the reason, this is never okay, and he thinks this action should come with consequences.

[00:00:54]>> Anyway, is there a motion to adjourn or are we just going to do this for a while? There a second?

[00:00:59]>> I'll second it.

[00:01:00]>> Well, all those in favor?

[00:01:01]>> Heil! Heil!

[00:01:03]>> Those words from Deer Valley school board member Kimberly Fisher were uttered at last Tuesday night's bi-weekly meeting.

[00:01:09]>> All I could think of tonight was Hitler, so I said heil or whatever. I I I am so tired of this.

[00:01:14]>> In a Facebook live video posted after the meeting, Fisher repeatedly criticized board president Paul Carver, calling him a dictator, accusing district leadership of shutting out community voices during discussions over school boundary changes. She also encouraged people to watch the end of the meeting.

[00:01:32]>> The end is kind of interesting and and to watch Paul actually lose his cool because uh he's come to realize that what he's done as a dictator running the board has damaged and and people are getting tired of it.

[00:01:48]>> Unlike Fisher, Carver sat down with 12 News reacting to her actions.

[00:01:53]>> I just need the community and indeed the world to know that those words and that motion that was made it does not reflect the community of Deer Valley, the Deer Valley School District, myself, anybody as far as I can tell um except apparently the person that that did it.

[00:02:11]>> Carver says his district email has been flooded with concerns from Jewish communities all across the globe. Word spreads fast when a gesture like this is deeply offensive to millions of people.

[00:02:23]>> Everybody deserves to be treated equally and fairly. Everybody's rights need to be honored and and to that point nobody should ever be singled out and victimized the way that they were at the Tuesday meeting.

[00:02:37]>> The board president says under Arizona law board members cannot simply remove another elected board member from office. Any action he says would ultimately have to come from voters.

[00:02:48]>> Whether that's getting a petition together with this is these are our complaints and these are the people that support it and presenting it at a board meeting.

[00:02:56]The community can do those kind of things. They could even recall her if that's something that they thought that they would want to do.

[00:03:00]>> Calls for Fisher to resign have come from the Deer Valley Education Association calling her quote "unfit for service". Fisher's public bio says she welcomes the community to fully engage with her and that is exactly what Carver hopes the Deer Valley community does in the coming weeks.

[00:03:17]>> District did not hire her, the community did.

[00:03:20]So this is a call out to the community that elections have consequences and we need to be just a little bit more engaged.

[00:03:28]>> And the next Deer Valley School Board meeting is scheduled for June 9th.

[00:03:32]Carver tells me he and other school board members are seriously considering putting a discussion item directly on that night's agenda that would allow them to discuss Fisher's actions publicly during that meeting. And again he welcomes any and all community input at that meeting as well.

[00:03:48]>> Troy.

[00:03:48]>> Yeah, Sean it seems like more and more we're seeing I don't care what level of government it is. Instead of, you know, good solid debate, you you get insults and incidents like this, and it's just too bad.

[00:03:57]>> School board meetings, city council meetings, anything where, you know, somebody's elected to a public body, it seems as though it's getting more and more divisive as we as we go on. That's something I asked Carver in our interview is school board meetings used to be about the kids. It used to be about how can we better serve them, and it feels as though now we're interjecting our actions with just extremely anti-Semitic remarks and extremely offensive remarks that should have no place in a meeting like that.

[00:04:20]>> Sean, thanks that for that report.