School affiliated with church hosting Trump event received nearly $1M in vouchers
A school affiliated with Dream City Church, where a conservative group was scheduled to host former President Donald Trump on Thursday, received over $900,000 in Arizona school voucher funds between July 2022 and June 2023.
Dream City Church itself received $525 across two transactions from the state's ESA program that school year.
Trump is set to visit the church's Phoenix campus for a town hall hosted by Turning Point Action, the political arm of the conservative organization Turning Point USA. The organization is undertaking a voter mobilization effort ahead of the November election in swing states, including Arizona.
Trump's visit comes a week after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. His conversation with Arizonans at Dream City Church will be led by conservative media personality Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA's co-founder. Trump appeared at a public event at the church in 2020.
What is Dream City Christian School?
Dream City Church is affiliated with Dream City Christian School, a private Christian school that serves students from preschool through 12th grade at the Glendale and Scottsdale campuses of Dream City Church. The school was formerly Joy Christian School.
According to filings with the Arizona Corporation Commission, Dream City Christian School is an LLC owned by Dream City Schools, a nonprofit led by The First Assembly of God of the City of Phoenix, also known as Dream City Church. The nonprofit was incorporated in 2020 by the current chief operations officer of Dream City Church.
In June 2022, Turning Point USA announced that it would launch an educational collaboration with Dream City Christian School.
Dream City Christian would become the first Turning Point Academy in the nation, Turning Point USA announced. Critical race theory, "wokeism" and "radical LGBT agendas" would have "no place" at Turning Point Academy, the announcement stated. According to the website for Turning Point Academy, which is described as a division of Turning Point USA, participation is free for schools and includes access to curriculum and training, mentoring from academy staff, invitations to conferences and events for all school personnel, the ability to post job openings and networking opportunities.
Dream City Christian is one of three Arizona schools affiliated with Turning Point Academy, which means it has "voluntarily subscribed to the Turning Point Academy Statement of Values," according to Turning Point Academy's website. Dream City Christian School faculty are expected to align with Turning Point USA values, according to the school's website.
Those values include that "the teaching of God's truth and virtue is the beginning of wisdom and is the best defense against destructive ideologies," that there are "two sexes" and "two genders," that "marriage is between one man and one woman" and that "all life is sacred, beginning at conception." Dream City Christian School also has its own statement of faith that school personnel are expected to personally believe and teach. The statement mirrors Dream City Church's statement of faith and includes similar messages as Turning Point USA's statement of values.
Inside Dream City: Take a look at one of Charlie Kirk's Freedom Night in America events at Dream City Church
Dream City school received $941K in school voucher funds between July 2022 and June 2023
In the year following Turning Point USA's June 2022 announcement introducing Dream City Christian School as a Turning Point Academy, the school received $940,629.39 in funds from the state's school voucher program across 632 transactions, according to records from the State Treasurer's Office. The school's tuition is $10,450 for kindergarteners through sixth graders, $12,580 for seventh and eighth grade students and $13,999 for high school students, according to its website.
The voucher program, officially known as Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account program, allows families to use state money for educational expenses like private school tuition, supplies and tutoring. It was expanded in 2022 to include all children not enrolled in public schools; formerly, it had been reserved for select groups like children with disabilities.
Most voucher students receive between $6,000 and $9,000 per year, according to the Arizona Department of Education's most recent quarterly report on the program.
Dream City Christian School also received over $2 million through the state's private school tax-credit program during fiscal year 2023, according to a March report from the Arizona Department of Revenue.
That program allows individuals and corporations to get a dollar-for-dollar credit on their taxes for giving to non-profit school-tuition organizations, which in turn give scholarships to students attending private schools.
The majority of the money that went to Dream City Christian during fiscal year 2023 came from corporate tax-credit donations toward scholarships for low-income students. An additional $611,042 was reserved for future scholarships for Dream City Christian from the program, according to the Department of Revenue report.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: School affiliated with Dream City Church got nearly $1M in vouchers