Posted on 04/08/2008 3:30:43 AM PDT by Amelia
The bottom line is clear, says Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl: The Catholic Church can no longer afford to run a full complement of inner-city parochial schools serving a population that is, by an overwhelming majority, non-Catholic.
So, facing a deficit of about $50 million over the next five years, the church is moving to convert at least seven D.C. elementary schools into secular, taxpayer-funded charter schools.
"We simply don't have the resources to keep all those schools open," Wuerl said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors the other day. "We have exhausted the resources available to us."
[more at article link]
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Catholic education in the region is expanding -- with the Archdiocese of Washington opening its first new elementary school in Montgomery County in a decade and hundreds of students heading to parochial schools under the D.C. voucher program.In Northern Virginia, two high schools are being planned by the Diocese of Arlington, each to house about 1,000 students within three years.
This growth runs counter to figures that show a 4 percent nationwide decline in Catholic school enrollment in the past decade, most of it occurring recently after increases in the 1990s....Parents also cite the fact that parochial school tuition is a fraction of the cost of top private schools in the region....Catholic education is less expensive than independent private schools, which can charge $20,000 or more a year...In the Archdiocese of Washington, tuition generally ranges from $2,500 to $4,000 for elementary schools and nearly $7,000 and up for high schools, said Jennifer Reed, assistant director of communications. Tuition for the new school in Rockville is $6,000.
In the Arlington diocese, which encompasses eight counties and four cities in Northern Virginia, the average tuition is $3,550 for elementary schools and $7,500 for high schools. The tuitions have increased 5 percent to 9 percent annually in recent years, said diocese spokesman Soren Johnson. Much of that is driven by teaching costs; Catholic schools now are mostly staffed by lay instructors, so salaries are much higher than when nuns largely filled the same jobs.
I didn't read the whole article, so I wonder if it touched on the obvious point that hardly anyone ever raises when they talk about Catholic schools in inner-city neighborhoods: How many of the students in these schools are Catholic anyway?
The majority are not. I wonder what the percentage of non-Catholics attending Catholic schools who later convert might be?
In any case, I do think it's a shame. Probably because of the discipline and back-to-basics approach (and perhaps because parents who send their children to these schools have above-average concern for education) Catholic schools do an exemplary job in the inner cities.
I'm kind of interested in costs today, because last night there was some discussion on another thread about whether or not public schools cost too much.
It seems to me that, in most cases, quality education is not inexpensive, although it may seem to be if it's subsidized in some way. (It also seems that comparing public schools to private schools is frequently comparing apples and oranges since public schools have to comply with more laws and mandates and supply certain services that aren't required of private schools...)
Ahhhh...the Springtime of the Church...things are so much better now that we don’t try to convert people to the Faith. Follow the money out to the suburbs and abandon the inner city poor. Shame.
the diocesan catholic schools [in the suburbs] are less expensive than the independent ones, because they are subsidized by the diocese. Gonzaga and Visitation are both college prep, extremely competitive, and take only the top students from the tristate area. They are independent and not affiliated with a diocese, and they receive donations from alumni etc. Entire classrooms have been donated to the school and i have even seen plaques where water fountains have been donated by families etc. LOL! The basement of St. Aloyisius Church on Gonzaga’s campus, houses a homeless shelter for men, and christian service is a huge componenet of Gonzaga’s mission. The school’s motto is “men for others” There are inner-city minority boys attending Gonzaga on scholarship, the link i posted has it at nearly one third, 30%.
BINGO!
A parent's most important mission field is their own child. The next most important mission field is that of their congregation. Once these children are cared for, if their are excess resources then they can be applied to others.
It's like the oxygen on a plane. Notice how the flight attendant always tells the passengers to put the oxygen mask on their own face first before helping others? If Church member don't start saving their own children first, there won't be a church to help anyone else!
Why would any believing Catholic send their precious child into the government indoctrination camps? Sorry, but I just don't understand it. Even if their own local church can not provide a Catholic school for the children, surely parents could join together to form homeschool cooperatives, enroll in virtual schools, start dame schools, or mini-schools. If the children of the congregation aren't worth then what on earth is?
Ahhhh...the Springtime of the Church...things are so much better now that we don’t try to convert people to the Faith. Follow the money out to the suburbs and abandon the inner city poor. Shame.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Please read post #10.
Homeschoolers are proving you wrong on that point every day.
i am a proponent of school vouchers, i think that would level the playing field for all socio-economic groups, as far as education goes. the northern VA/MD/DC area has some of the top rated school districts in the country, yet there are people standing in line in the early dawn hours on registration days for lots of the Catholic elementary schools here. i am not sure why that is. i know in our case, we wanted our moral teachings backed up, and not undermined at school, so our kids attended Catholic school from pre-school, and now my oldest is a freshman at a Catholic college [university of dallas is authentically Catholic, not nominally Catholic like a Georgetown U. etc.]. I have nieces and a nephew attending public school in Ohio and it is much like it was when i grew up and attended school in southwestern PA. but in the DC area, the PC insanity would be insufferable and i have heard many horror stories along those lines here.
Yes, that's my point...the tuition charged by parochial schools is not necessarily the true cost of an education at the parochial school.
There are costs, and then there are costs.
For instance, didn't you once say that you put a lucrative career on hold for a number of years to homeschool your children? If you counted your lost wages as "tuition fees", would the homeschooling have been as inexpensive?
i am not competent to discuss it because i don’t have the numbers at hand, but i do believe that studies have been done as to what the cost per student is at public vs. private schools. For one thing public schools have an incredible bureaucracy, that is, high priced union-waged overhead. I recently requested that my son’s transcript be sent on to another institution for a summer program he is interested in, and so i emailed the registrar. I had to laugh out loud at his title/tagline in his return email, as it had his name followed by: Database Administrator/Registrar/Freshman Basketball Coach. i believe that in a public school that would be three different people!
I'm not quite as disappointed as you are. These Catholic schools were originally intended to provide a thorough -- and Catholic -- education to their students. When the focus of their mission turned from catechetics to simply providing a superior secular education to their government-run counterparts, they no longer had any reason to exist.
My children did go to a small, old style Catholic school that in the 1990s still had nuns from South America. We donated each month to the school to support parish children until they adopted an ultraliberal philosophy under a new priest a few years ago. Re the D.C. schools, I still make a point that non-Catholic kids have been going there for years with probably no effort to convert them. And sadly, sometimes it is easier to convert strangers. Our Lord said it would be thus, with some houses divided, son against father, believer against non, and not to throw pearls before swine. It would not have hurt to try to convert those kids who were already there, it is just no longer pc.
This is a shame, and reflects something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you don’t educate a future generation of Catholics, you won’t have them.
I propose a radical solution to this dilemma: donate the schools to Catholic organizations that are willing to run them. I would suggest the Eastern Catholic eparchies as well as lay religious organizations like the Legion of Mary and Catholic home education organizations. The Maronites have a wonderful church in DC, and I don’t think they have a school yet.
I suspect that the Roman Diocese would sooner slash it’s wrists than consider this, so it’s not an option. But it’s nice to dream about.
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