One hundred Valley Interfaith Project leaders from Legislative District 28, North Phoenix and Paradise Valley, gathered February 11th for a Civic Academy on state education finance.

VIP leaders detailed fiscal constraints the state placed on public education over the past 40 years, which once ranked in the upper half of states for per pupil spending.

Special Guests in attendance were State Superintendent of Education, Diane Douglas, Legislators Kate Brophy McGee and Eric Meyer, Paradise Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Jim Lee, and the Morrison Institute's Dan Hunting.

VIP leaders taught about several mounting legislative threats to public school funding: Universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, phasing out of desegregation funds, and the quiet change to current year funding in the past budget cycle. These legislative proposals threaten to undo the progress proposed by Proposition 123, a negotiated settlement to partially restore withheld state inflation funding.