Mesa Superintendent Receives Honor: District is State’s Largest With 87 Schools

By Andrea Natekar, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Dec. 18–Mesa Unified School District Superintendent Deb Duvall was named Superintendent of the Year by the Arizona School Boards Association. She will now represent the state at the national competition in Florida in February.

“We’re quite pleased and proud of our superintendent. We have no doubt she is the best superintendent in Arizona and no doubt she is a strong, viable candidate at the national level, as well,” said Mike Cowan, associate superintendent of education services.

Duvall said she was encouraged to apply for the board by her staff. She was then selected from a pool of applicants by her peers, and the award was announced last week at the state association’s annual conference in Phoenix.

Duvall runs the Mesa district, the state’s largest, where she oversees 87 schools and some 11,000 employees.

She began her career as a teacher in Los Angeles. Since then, she has held a variety of administrative positions in several states, including principal and assistant superintendent in North Carolina.

Before being named superintendent in 2000, Duvall was assistant superintendent of elementary schools, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, and associate superintendent of the Mesa district.

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