While Congress wrangles over how to dole out the next round of coronavirus relief money, Catholic leaders are using a recent Supreme Court decision to argue that parents should be given federal aid to apply toward religious education.
The bishops representing New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, cities that have some of the highest concentrations of Catholics in the United States, in a Thursday op-ed urged lawmakers to free up scholarship money for needy parents. That money, they said, could then be put toward Catholic or other religious schools, a use the Supreme Court recently affirmed in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue.
“Helping tuition-paying families keep their Catholic and other non-government schools open this fall must be part of the larger, urgently needed plan to sustain our nation. Doing so is right for parents, children, and their devoted teachers who depend on these schools,” wrote Cardinals Timothy Dolan, Sean O’Malley, and Jose Gomez in a joint op-ed.
The bishops, similar to many other proponents of the “school choice” movement, argued that aid given directly to parents would help provide education that is “documented” as better than public schools. And, the bishops added, helping parents continue to afford Catholic education would also benefit public schools, by not flooding them with students who can no longer stay private.
“To enable families to provide the best education for their children and stabilize enrollment in Catholic and other non-government schools, Congress should also adopt a federal scholarship tax credit modeled after successful state-level credits,” the bishops wrote, praising Espinoza for endorsing such programs. “No state should be permitted to deny their resident students access to scholarship opportunities resulting from federal tax policy.”
Legal advocates for Catholic education have also pushed for expanding parents’ options during the pandemic. Nicole Stelle Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote in a recent City Journal article that Espinoza opened the door for expanded school funding just as many schools face the possibility of closure.
“The daily stream of reports that yet another Catholic school has been forced to close for good by COVID-19 suggests that time is of the essence,” she wrote. “The battle for parental choice, to be sure, is not for the fainthearted, but expanded choice is achievable — and should be pursued with urgency.”
The Alliance for Catholic Education, a Catholic advocacy group, reports that more than 130 Catholic schools in 23 states have closed because of the pandemic. The group predicts that number will rise as more parents decide they can no longer afford tuition.
The possibility of a collapse in Catholic education has also become a political talking point for Trump defenders. Former Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who serves on the Trump campaign’s outreach coalition to Catholics, wrote Wednesday in the Washington Examiner that subsidizing religious education should be a “bipartisan effort” because of the success of Catholic schools. Huelskamp, however, noted that former Vice President Joe Biden opposed the case for religious schools made in Espinoza while Trump has repeatedly supported it.
In a press conference last week, Trump stressed the importance of giving parents the freedom to choose whether to send their children to religious or private schools. Trump said that if public schools choose to remain online in the fall, parents should be allowed to use stimulus money to pursue other options.
“If schools do not reopen, the funding should go to parents to send their child to public, private, charter, religious, or home school of their choice,” Trump said. “The keyword being ‘choice.’ If the school is closed, the money should follow the student, so the parents and families are in control of their own decisions.”
