SCHOOL MINISTRY

History

Catholic Education V

This is the fifth in a series of six articles about the history of Catholic elementary education in the United States.   These articles celebrate Catholic Schools Week - this past week - January 23 through 30.

Financing the Catholic Parochial School Today

Though many factors come into play in various schools, generally the struggle with financing Catholic education this past three decades has been because of two factors.  

The Change in Staffing

The first factor is the wholesale change in the staffing of the parochial school system that has led to huge escalation in the cost of education. While sisters taught for room, board, and a modest allowance years ago, today our teacher salaries range from $23,000 to $53,400 per year (with benefits, $23,000 to $58,300), not to mention the salaries of the additional staff beyond the classroom required for effective education in our time. Indeed, 77% of our school budget goes to salary and benefits. Many people in the Catholic community are not yet realistic about the massive impact of this change.  

This wholesale change in our Catholic schools has pushed us to face grim realities and develop creative possibilities. The grim realities have included partial or full school closings or contentious mergers. The creative possibilities have included the engagement of the neighborhood and local businesses, or the larger diocese, in the educational enterprise.   Shifting of various sorts - grim and creative - will continue to happen on Catholic parochial education for many years to come.  

The Change in Purpose

The second factor that has come into play is the change in the purpose of the Catholic parochial school. The parochial system was established in 1854 to socialize an immigrant community in an aggressively evangelistic Protestant culture. This purpose led to the mandating of the parochial school education by the bishops in the last century.   Many of us grew up in this continuing enclave mentality. Today, this mindset has led some people to have a sense of entitlement about Catholic education, believing that the parish or church "owes" an education to a child.

However, with the Catholic population well-assimilated in our national life, and with Catholics among the highest wage-earners in the country, Catholic parochial education's purpose is changed. There is no question that education in a Catholic school is the most effective way to help nurture a child's faith and build the foundation necessary to preserve it through a lifetime. Yet today our purpose - and the motivation for very many parents - is more in the direction of offering a high-quality, faith-grounded, disciplined, personally caring alternative to public schools.  

In this changed context, while the Church certainly owes every child education in the teachings of the Catholic faith and preparation for the sacraments, and deeply desires to build the foundations of faith for a lifetime, it does not "owe" our children education in, for example, mathematics or language arts. This hard reality is difficult for some of us to understand.  

It will take a good long time and some hard talk for us to grasp the real implications of this change of purpose and the consequent shift in obligations and responsibilities underneath them. As bishops, pastors, administrators, teachers, parents and parishioners, we U.S. Catholics have hardly begun to scratch the surface of this fundamental issue of our shift in purpose.  

What Does Viable and Sustainable Financing Look Like?

Whenever I get into a conversation about financing our school ministry, it inevitably turns to comparing OLP with other parish communities.   The energy under this movement to compare has to do with tuition.   So, how do parishes do school ministry with cheaper tuition?   There are three ways.  

The first way is simple accident. Because of population and income demographics within their territory, some parishes simply have a bigger and broader financial base than others. That would be obvious for Our Lady of Grace in Edina, for instance. It is generally true as well of Nativity of Our Lord, the three-parish Highland Catholic community, and Annunciation. With a greater financial base in the parish, allocating substantial funds for the school ministry is more doable. Moreover, building a large endowment for financing education and tuition grants is also a relatively simpler and easier task for the larger, wealthier parishes in the Archdiocese.  

A second way - and it often combines with the first or third - is that parishes limit ministries other than the school.   Some parishes have little or no religious formation for adults, children or children attending public or private schools. Some parishes have little pastoral care for the elderly, sick, divorced and separated, alienated, and grieving.   Some parishes leave volunteers to plan liturgy, play and sing at Mass. The saved expense of staff salaries - and some saving from having fewer programs in the school - goes to support the school ministry as a whole.  

A third way, and far the most common, is to pay small salaries to school and parish staff and to defer maintenance. I am aware of a half-time teacher in another parish grade school, for instance, who has nineteen years of experience teaching and who makes $10,000 ... and she had to argue for it. I have learned from bitter experience that deferred maintenance eventually costs a parish far more than it saves because, inevitably, there comes the time for catching up: paint, concrete, blacktop, roofing, boilers, lower ceilings, fire alarms, clocks, fire sprinkler systems, tuck pointing, etc.

In an effort to be just in our parish ministry, employee salary needs, and maintenance, we here at OLP are choosing at his time neither the second nor the third way. We are working to develop the first by focusing on the spiritual grounding for stewardship.

A Fourth Way:   Need Based Education

Another major way of dealing with financing our schools toward viability and sustainability has been the growth across the country of what is sometimes called "cost based/need based" tuition structures for Catholic education.

Many dioceses - like those in California and Ohio - have started asking families to pay the full cost of the education of their child. With the education program fully funded by tuition, both parish endowment and Sunday collections are then set aside for tuition grants for needy families, capital improvement and increasing endowment. Catholic dioceses and educators increasingly recommend this plan across the nation, including our own archdiocese.  

The major criticism of the cost based/needs based tuition plan is that it runs the risk of making Catholic parochial schools elite. With tuition at $4,000, the critique goes, only the children of the wealthy will be able to afford Catholic schools.  

The cb/nb tuition plan, however, can be a form of financial redistribution. It can help most those who have less, and help some those in the middle range of income. In this system, parents who can afford the tuition pay it.   Those who cannot afford tuition, or all of it, can apply for subsidy and are granted assistance. This tuition structure has given schools in other dioceses new life, and it is the tuition structure for Faithful Shepherd in Eagan, St. Ambrose in Woodbury, Nativity of Mary in Bloomington and Holy Spirit in St. Paul.]

Sunday Stewardship: Key to Catholic Education

The success of any of the financing structures above, however, rests on one key element of parish life: faithful and generous Sunday stewardship.