It’s time the Catholic Bishops join forces with rank-and-file parents and demand school choice otherwise as you post confirms the writing is on the wall.
I no longer think that vouchers are a good idea.
In some sense, it’s a matter of justice, and thus, Catholic families have a moral right to vouchers or some other governmental support for Catholic school choice.
But as we’ve seen in DC, they make Catholic schools and families wards of the state, and potentially limit our freedom. What if the Congress rather than say, “No more vouchers,” had said, “Vouchers can continue, so long as you...” fill in the blank. And what if the program, instead of having a couple of thousand kids, had, say, 10,000 or more kids, representing a plurality of kids in DC Catholic schools?
The problem isn’t lack of government support. At most, we Catholics should take little more than perhaps modest tax credits for not using the public schools. We are better off with limited or no government support.
The problem is within the Church.
When I was in elementary school, our parish picked up 80% of the school’s budget. Catholic school was available to EVERY CHILD IN THE PARISH at nominal rates, and for families who couldn’t afford those nominal rates, THE KIDS WENT FOR FREE. The elementary school that I attended had roughly 800 kids. This is one of the schools that I mentioned in my previous post. The school now has something around 300 students. Some of that is demographic, but a significant part of it is that tuition has risen at a multiple of the rate of inflation. What was a couple of hundred dollars in 1970 is now five grand. That’s a 25-fold increase in tuition. My father was a government employee in 1970 and made $14K. The equivalent government employee today doesn’t make $350K.
But when you look in the Archdiocese of Washington, you’ll see that the parochial schools no longer get 80% of their budget from the associated parishes. In fact, Cardinal Hickey forced the parishes and schools to reduce the subsidy to no more than 20% of the school budget.
At the same time, as the numbers of religious who were teaching declined and the number of lay teachers increased, personnel costs skyrocketed.
My own high school had a budget of under $1 million per year when I graduated in 1978. Today, it has a budget of $10 million, even though it has roughly the same number of students. Back then, tuition was about $800 per year. Today, it’s nearly $12K per year. My father was making about $40K in 1978. That’s a 15-fold increase. The equivalent fellow working today isn’t making $600K.
So, while budgets were skyrocketing, parish support was plummeting. And thus, tuitions went up even more than budgets, in percentage terms.
And what was once affordable and available to ALL Catholic families is now available chiefly to upper-middle class Catholic families.
When I was a kid, we were all dropped off by our parents at our high school in Chevies and Fords and Dodges. A few of us could afford cars. Today, when I drop my son off at the same high school, 30+ years later, most of the cars are Lexuses, Mercedes, Cadillacs, etc. I drive one of those, myself. So many kids have their own cars now that they have to have a lottery for parking spaces.
What was once a school for working class and middle-income families is now a school for upper-middle and upper-income families. How many families can freight $12K for one kid? Especially if you have three or four or more.
But the problem isn’t just with bishops like the late Cardinal Hickey. It’s with the laity, too. I sense nothing in my own parish that suggests the average household would like to throw an extra $25 per month to double the subsidy we provide to our regional Catholic elementary school (although just an increase of $25 per month would reduce tuition at the school by 30% per child, or more like 50% per Catholic child).
At least where I live, in my archdiocese, if the people really, really wanted Catholic schools, there are enough folks in the pews where, if everyone pitched in only a modest additional amount, we could dramatically reduce the cost of Catholic education and offer it to many more Catholic students.
I say these things to folks, and folks say, “Yeah, I guess. Nice idea,” but no one really has much of a heart for it.
THAT'S what’s killing Catholic schools.
sitetest
< /rant>