A separate government
Ask who runs Scottsdale’s schools and the answer is not the city. Public schools in Arizona are run by school districts, independent local governments created under state law. Each has an elected governing board that hires a superintendent, adopts a budget, sets school boundaries and calendars, and can ask voters for more money. The mayor and council have no role in any of it.
Scottsdale is served mainly by three districts:
- Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD), the city’s own district since the first schoolhouse opened in 1896. It covers about 112 square miles: most of Scottsdale, almost all of the town of Paradise Valley, and slices of Phoenix and Tempe. It does not extend north of Pinnacle Peak Road.
- Paradise Valley Unified, based in northeast Phoenix, which also serves parts of north Scottsdale on the Phoenix side.
- Cave Creek Unified, which serves Cave Creek, Carefree and the northern reaches of Scottsdale.
A few edge addresses fall elsewhere, so the district map, not the mailing address, is the final word.
On the ballot
School board races are nonpartisan and appear on the November general election ballot in even-numbered years. SUSD’s five board members serve staggered four-year terms without pay. The same ballots carry the districts’ override and bond questions, so a Scottsdale voter can find a school tax, a school board race and a city council race on the same ballot, with the school questions decided by district voters and the council race by city voters, on two different maps. In November 2026, for example, SUSD is asking voters to approve a $375 million bond for building renovations, technology, safety and buses. The elections guide explains how those ballots are built.
Choice beyond the district
Arizona families don’t have to use their assigned school. The state lets students attend public schools outside their home district, a 1994 law created charter schools, and since 2022 every student can take an Empowerment Scholarship Account to private school or homeschool. Scottsdale families use all three.
How the money works
Districts get most of their operating money through the state funding formula, set by the legislature: a per-student base amount, weighted for things like grade level and special education, and paid partly through a local property tax at a state-set rate and partly from the state general fund. Districts with higher property values raise more locally and receive less state aid, which matters in a wealthy district like Scottsdale’s.
Above the formula, voters decide. A maintenance and operations override lets a district spend up to 15% more than its formula limit, paid through a secondary property tax; it lasts up to seven years, phasing down at the end unless voters renew it. Districts can also seek smaller capital overrides and bonds, borrowing for buildings repaid through property taxes. These show up on the school portion of your tax bill, which is often the largest piece of it; the property tax guide walks through the line items.
The county’s role
The elected Maricopa County School Superintendent is the districts’ back office. The office supports school board elections, appoints people to fill board vacancies, processes district finances, keeps homeschool affidavits and runs a small regional school district for students in special settings. As of 2026 the superintendent is Shelli Boggs, who took office in January 2025. The county officers guide covers the office alongside the others.
From a one-room school to a unified district
Scottsdale’s schools are older than its city government. The district was formed on July 13, 1896; its first classes met in Alza Blount’s adobe home, and the first schoolhouse, a 16-by-18-foot frame room, opened that fall with fourteen pupils. In 1909 the district built a two-room brick school that later served as city hall and is now the Little Red Schoolhouse museum. When the town incorporated in 1951, the school district simply carried on as its own government, with its own lines, and the district and city have grown on separate tracks ever since. That is why SUSD educates much of Paradise Valley, and why the far north of Scottsdale, annexed in the 1980s, landed in districts headquartered elsewhere. See north Scottsdale for how that part of the city grew.
Charters and ESAs
Arizona became the eleventh state with a charter law in 1994, passed in a special session, and 67 charter schools opened in 1995. Charters are public, tuition-free and state-funded, but they are run by boards that are appointed rather than elected, and most are authorized by the State Board for Charter Schools rather than any district. They cannot levy local property taxes, so they don’t appear on override ballots.
Empowerment Scholarship Accounts began in 2011 for students with disabilities and expanded by stages until HB 2853, signed by Governor Doug Ducey on July 7, 2022, made every K-12 student eligible. Supporters describe it as funding students rather than systems; critics point to its cost to the state budget and to less accountability for how money is spent. The program’s cost is now a standing argument in every state budget.
Colleges and the Community
Higher education is another layer. The Maricopa County Community College District runs ten colleges under a seven-member elected board, five chosen by district and two countywide, and levies its own property tax. Scottsdale Community College opened in 1970 on 160 acres of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, leased until 2069, and its mascot, the Fighting Artichoke, is a campus joke that stuck. The Community also runs its own tribally controlled Salt River Schools, outside the state district system entirely.