Catholic school administrators are trying to lure in families whose public schools have been shut down by the coronavirus pandemic with tuition assistance programs, giving dioceses the rare opportunity to enroll hundreds of new students.
“A lot of diocese and schools are trying to offer more financial assistance than ever before,” Kathy Mears, president of the National Catholic Educational Association, told the Washington Examiner.
Public school districts all over the United States will not reopen for in-person classes in order to avoid new coronavirus clusters on campuses. While governors can mandate that certain counties keep all schools closed for in-person classes, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom did, most governors have given schools the authority to decide whether to reopen remotely or in person.
Families have shown increasing interest in sending their children to Catholic schools and are prepared to pay for in-person classes in lieu of the virtual classes offered by their local public schools. To help families afford the transition from public schools, Catholic dioceses have begun instituting tuition assistance programs.
The National Catholic Educational Association has urged Congress to include funding to Catholic education in the next coronavirus economic stimulus package, but how they plan to reopen safely is up to each private school.
“The church believes that these decisions need to be made locally as close to the situation as possible,” Mears said. “And they’re leaning heavily on their local public health offices.”
Catholic schools are outside the jurisdiction of public school systems and have more leeway in deciding how they will reopen. For example, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican and critic of President Trump’s coronavirus response, maintained that Maryland’s private schools should be allowed to make their own reopening decisions.
Earlier this month, Hogan overruled a decision by Travis Gayles, Montgomery County’s health officer and chief of public health services, to keep all private schools closed in addition to public schools. The announcement outraged parents, who argued that it discriminated against private and parochial schools. Hogan decided Gayles’s announcement was an overreach, saying that county health officials did not have the authority to order private schools to teach online.
One of many dioceses offering financial assistance to families is in New Hampshire. The Diocese of Manchester launched the “See You in Class” campaign, which will award grants for elementary school students and high school students transferring in. Students in first through eighth grade would receive $1,000 off tuition their first year and another $500 off their second year. High school students would receive $2,000 off the first year’s tuition and $1,000 off the second year. The campaign worked.
Interest in Manchester Catholic schools from public school families has skyrocketed in recent months, said Alison Mueller, director of marketing, enrollment, and development for the Diocese of Manchester. One school, Saint Christopher Academy, noted that it had received 241 applications as of Aug. 7 and has given 60 tours since July 1. They have waitlists in most grades. The Saint Francis of Assisi School had 49 new enrollments, Cardinal Lacroix Academy had 28, and Saint Catherine of Siena School had 40.
“Many of those families made the switch before they knew what their public school districts were going to do. Some of them just didn’t want to wait for the unknown,” Mueller said. “They want to know where their child is going to be instead of waiting until the end of July or August to know what their school district has decided.”
The Catholic Schools Foundation in Boston provides scholarships for students from poor and working-class families in the Archdiocese of Boston, which has over 110 schools.
The foundation has provided an additional $463,000 to 217 new families and families struggling financially due to the pandemic “but [are] desperate to keep their children in Catholic schools for the quality and stability it provides,” said Mike Reardon, executive director of the Catholic Schools Foundation.
Private and parochial schools are set to reopen in the coming weeks and will likely contend with new coronavirus cases just as public schools have. But the National Catholic Educational Association said that resuming Catholic school education is worth the risk.
“In some places, public schools are seeing us as being the ones who are taking a little more with that we can inform others,” Mears said. “We’re doing everything we can to mitigate risk. And we’re very aware that the risk is there.”
