Where nearly 550 low-income students involved in D.C.’s voucher program would go is a big question mark as officials decide whether to convert eight Catholic schools into public charter schools.
The proposal, which will be batted back and forth over the next two months, is to make public eight of the 12 schools in the Center City Consortium as a last resort to stave off multimillion-dollar deficits in the city’s Catholic schools.
Archdiocese leaders voted late last week to consider handing over control of the following schools: Assumption, Holy Comforter, Holy Name, Immaculate Conception, Nativity Catholic Academy, St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales and St. Gabriel.
Archdiocese of Washington spokeswoman Susan Gibbs said there are many matters to be decided, not least of which is what will become of the voucher recipients, who make-up more than one-third of those in the affected schools.
There are about 600 open spaces in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties’ Catholic schools, where at least some of the voucher students could go. The four consortium schools set to remain open alsocould swallow up the voucher students, Gibbs said.
Officials with the Washington Scholarship Fund, which administers the vouchers, said no matter what happens, voucher students won’t lose their scholarships.
If the Catholic schools go the charter route, pupils have a few options — stay in that school as or transfer to another private school in the program.
“This is just adding more options to a wonderful, robust landscape of educational options,” said Jennifer Brown, chief program and operations officer for the Washington Scholarship Fund.
The possible switch comes at a time of hot debate over private school vouchers. Earlier this year, a Department of Education study on school-choice programs found that while parents of voucher students are more satisfied with their children’s experiences, the students haven’t shown academic improvements.
Opponents of vouchers say the consortium’s financial failures bolster their argument.
“Taxpayer dollars are going to schools that can’t stay afloat, and we feel the money should be going back into the public school system,” said Judith E. Schaeffer, legal director
of the People for the American Way.
Catholic schools across the nation
» 49.8 percent of the Catholic school population is enrolled in the Mideast and Great Lakes region
» In those areas, student enrollment has plummeted 54 percent in the past decade
» Non-Catholic student enrollment in Catholic schools has risen from 2.7 percent in 1970 to 11.2 percent a decade later and 13.8 percent today nationwide
» The percentage of minorities in Catholic schools has more than doubled in the past 30 years
Source: National Catholic Education Association
