You are fairly correct. Let me give you an example. When we lived in Oklahoma, we belonged to a strong Catholic parish. It had a school building which wasn’t used except for religious ed and church functions. The pastor tried his hardest to get people to contribute to reopen the school, and my husband and I pledged money (and we weren’t well off either) to help. We were homeschooling because the public schools were atrocious. Not enough people were willing to contribute, but I remember that a lot of these people had much larger, nicer houses than dh and I owned.
We then moved to Indiana, and luckily the small town of about 15,000 we moved to not only had a good K-6 Catholic school, which we promptly enrolled our oldest in, but right next door was the 7-12 Catholic school.
Forward to our current home of Fort Smith, which has 3 Catholic schools PK-6, and then one Junior High which schools the 7-9th grades. After that, it’s public school only. One thing dh and I have noticed is that the families associated with the parish school are the most active in the parish and are the ones keeping the parish running. There are 1500 registered families, and 300 students in the school. Again, lots of the families I see in the parish sending their kids to the public schools are driving new cars and making better money than my dh does.
Now we are in the process of getting ready to relocate to southeast OH, and we are once again having the problem of either not finding a Catholic school or finding schools to accomodate any higher than 8th grade. My husband (who is already in Ohio) is going to check out one school today and another on Thursday, but the choices are limited by distance and cost.
So the two things that frustrate me the most are the fact that there are people who are just unwilling to send their kids to these schools at the expense of lifestyle, which therefore limits the ability of the parish to keep schools open. So, dh and I either have to pay more per child or not find a school at all because they don’t exist. Meanwhile, I have to maintain my cool when someone driving a $400/month car payment tells me they can’t afford private school; dh and I are driving older cars and living in a older home to finance our kids’ education and pay for the ‘free’ school that the fancy car drivers send their kids to.
It’s a bitter cycle :P
That's really sad. Our area had so many Catholic families wanting to send their kids to Catholic high school that they couldn't wait for the bishop to build another, so people pitched in and built & staffed a couple "in the Catholic tradition" since they weren't actually diocesan. I think the two non-diocesan ones might have merged after the diocesan (John Paul the Great) was finished because I've only seen ads for one in the bulletin. Steve & I pitch in for the school collections, trying to keep the cost within reach for everyone. Best of luck to you!