Queen Creek Unified School District: All 15 Schools, Their State Letter Grades and How Enrollment Works

1.Which Queen Creek Addresses Are Actually in QCUSD

The district line and the town line are not the same line, and they cross both ways. Three QCUSD campuses — Eastmark High School, Gateway Polytechnic Academy and Silver Valley Elementary — carry Mesa, AZ 85212 addresses, because they sit in the Eastmark master plan (campus contact pages, September 2026). Two schools with Queen Creek addresses are not QCUSD at all.

Higley Unified graded A as a district for 2024-25 (Queen Creek Tribune, secondary); published counts of how many schools it runs disagree, so the district grade and its year are the only Higley numbers we print. J.O. Combs graded B as a district in the same state file. Chandler Unified is often named among the districts serving the Queen Creek area, but we could not find a Chandler Unified boundary document that reaches an address inside town limits — treat that as unconfirmed in both directions and ask the district about the specific address.

Our guide to verifying school boundaries walks that check line by line, and the Queen Creek neighborhood guide is where to shortlist communities before you start running addresses.

2.Every QCUSD School and Its 2024-25 State Letter Grade

This is the district’s full rated roster from the Arizona State Board of Education’s FY2025 Combined A-F Public File, covering the 2024-25 school year. The year matters: Arizona reissues letter grades annually, and a grade quoted without one is close to useless.

Crismon High School answers the question the coverage left open: the Tribune said QCUSD had four B schools and named three. The state file names the fourth, and it is Crismon, the newest of the district’s three high schools. Crismon serves grades 7-12, and so does Eastmark High School: QCUSD’s High School Options page lists both campuses at grades 7-12, and Arizona School Report Cards records the same span for each for the 2024-25 school year (as of September 2026). Eastmark’s own homepage still carries an older welcome paragraph written around ninth through twelfth graders, while its fast-facts block, the district page and the state record all say 7-12. Our Queen Creek High vs. Crismon High comparison sets the two campuses side by side.

Campus detail lives in our guide to the Queen Creek high schools and the K-6 roundup.

3.Does Queen Creek Have Good Schools? What the A Actually Measures

By the state’s own A-F accountability grades, yes. QCUSD is an A district for 2024-25, 10 of its 15 rated schools hold an A, and nothing graded below C — and that single C is the Queen Creek Virtual Academy, the K-12 online and hybrid program, not a neighborhood campus.

What the A-F grade weighs:

• Academic performance on state assessments.
• Year-over-year student growth, not just the raw score.
• Learning environment and subgroup outcomes, including attendance and safety.
• For high schools, graduation rates and post-secondary readiness as well.

The file assigns grades; it does not rank. A “best district in Arizona” headline is somebody’s ranking method, not a state finding, and the school scores printed on listing sites are not Arizona accountability grades — they rarely even carry the year they were built from. The only grade on this page is the state’s, dated.

The district also runs an Enhanced Learning Program for gifted and advanced learners and 32 Career and Technical Education programs across its three high schools (qcusd.org, September 2026). Set those against a tuition-free charter seat in our charter school roundup.

4.How Enrollment Works: Home School, Open Enrollment and Kindergarten

Registration starts with the address. QCUSD sets a student’s home school from its site locator, and residents register there. Anything else — another QCUSD campus, or a family outside the district — runs through open enrollment.

1. Run the exact address through the site locator to get the home school for each grade band.
2. Register at that home school if that is where the student goes.
3. For any other QCUSD school, file the open enrollment application — a PDF from the district’s open enrollment page — before the school year begins.
4. Approval depends on space at the requested school.
5. Plan the drive: QCUSD does not transport students open-enrolled outside their home boundary.

Kindergarten: the August 31 cutoff and the one full-day exception

A child must turn five by August 31 to start kindergarten. Half-day kindergarten runs district-wide with one exception: Katherine Mecham Barney Elementary is full-day only. A child who misses the cutoff can sit the district’s early-entrance evaluation, which carries a $75 non-refundable fee (qcusd.org, September 2026).

For grades 7 and 8, our middle school guide covers Newell Barney College Preparatory School and Queen Creek Junior High. Crismon High and Eastmark High both serve grades 7-12 as well (QCUSD High School Options page and Arizona School Report Cards for 2024-25, as of September 2026), so ask QCUSD which campus a 7th or 8th grader at your address attends.

5.The 2026-27 Calendar: A July 20 Start and When the Bells Ring

QCUSD starts early even by Arizona norms. The first day of 2026-27 is July 20, 2026, with Meet the Teacher on July 16. For a summer move that means registration has to be done ahead of a July first bell, not an August one — and an open enrollment application has to be in before the school year starts.

A zero-hour high school student is in class at 6:30 a.m., and elementary and high school dismissals sit 40 minutes apart, so a household with both runs two pickups. Our 30-day relocation checklist sequences registration against the utility and address steps.

6.Bonds, Overrides and What They Do to a Tax Bill

The most recent QCUSD measure on the Maricopa County School Superintendent’s election record is the 2024 override, which passed. On the certified Maricopa County canvass it carried 53.71% yes, 22,177 votes to 19,115, and it authorized a 15% maintenance and operations override for six years (Ballotpedia citing the county canvass, as of September 2026). Three cycles failed before it: bonds in 2021 and 2022, and a bond and override in 2023. The county page lists measures by year, not by date.

School district levies are their own line on an Arizona tax bill, separate from the town, county, community college and fire district lines. On Maricopa County’s tax year 2026 rate table, QCUSD No. 95 levies 3.3903 primary and 1.9508 secondary per $100 of assessed value — the single largest layer of a Maricopa-side Queen Creek bill, and the line an override moves. For comparison the Town levies a primary rate of $1.46 per $100 for FY2026-27, says it has no secondary property tax, and puts its own portion near $429 a year on a median-valued home (Town news release, June 2026). Our property tax breakdown works the whole bill through on each side of the county line.

7.ParentVUE and StudentVUE: What They Are and Where to Log In

QCUSD runs the Synergy ParentVUE and StudentVUE portals for grades, attendance and school communication. Parents and students have separate logins, both linked from the district gradebook page.

• Parents: ParentVUE login — grades, attendance and messages from the school.
• Students: StudentVUE login.
• Both are linked from the district’s gradebook page — the page to bookmark if a login URL changes.

What sits behind the login is grades, attendance and school communication (qcusd.org gradebook page, September 2026). Because Synergy is a district system rather than a per-campus one, QCUSD publishes that one pair of logins for every school it runs.

8.A Five-Step Check Before You Buy on a Queen Creek Address

1. Run the exact street address, not the subdivision name, through the QCUSD site locator.
2. If the answer is not a QCUSD school, repeat the check with the district it names.
3. Look up every school it names in the state’s A-F letter grade file, and write the school year beside each grade.
4. If you plan to open-enroll elsewhere, ask that school about capacity before the offer and budget the daily drive.
5. Check the district calendar against the move date: a July 20, 2026 first day means registration lands in the summer, not at the end of August.