Schools’ plans: ride out recession, grow in future

DENISE O’TOOLE KELLY | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

ORLANDO | With money tight these days, many families are scrutinizing every expense — including the tuition bill for keeping their children in Catholic school this fall. For some, the availability of a little help is making all the difference in the decision.

“It means that my daughter can have a better education,” Christie Robinson said about a $1,000 grant from a Knights of Columbus council. It is making it easier for her to afford to send Jordan back to Sacred Heart School in Lake Worth for third grade this year.

Though there are exceptions, Catholic school officials throughout the state told the Florida Catholic they generally are expecting fewer students for the 2009–2010 school year. They attribute some of the decline to the bad economy — parents who have lost or fear they will lose jobs and other income are choosing not to part with the tuition dollars. In response, school officials and supporters, such as the Knights of Columbus council assisting the Robinsons and 11 other families in the Diocese of Palm Beach, said they are working to make more tuition assistance available. School officials said they also made efforts to eliminate or limit tuition increases for the coming year. Many said they will ramp up fundraising efforts and look for ways to cut expenses as families weather the hard times.

However, a downward trend in enrollment in Florida’s Catholic schools started years before the economy tanked. James Herzog, associate director for education for the Florida Catholic Conference, said a statewide decline in pre–K to 12th–grade enrollment of about 3 percent a year began in the 2006–07 school year — after two devastating hurricane seasons and resulting insurance rates drove up living costs and drove families from the state.

“That kind of started things off, but the recession made it probably deeper and longer,” Herzog said of the enrollment decline, which has also been felt in the state’s public schools.

Before that, Florida’s Catholic schools were bucking national trends, experiencing steady growth in student numbers of about 2 percent a year since the early 1990s. With the notable exception of a current batch of closings in the Archdiocese of Miami, Florida for the most part has been able to preserve its Catholic school offerings.

And, Herzog said, federal projections show the state’s population of school–age children will begin to rebound this year and continue to grow for three to five years. In the meantime, school leaders at the parish, diocesan and statewide levels have launched efforts to ensure Catholic schools remain a viable option for both current and future Florida families.

“Sometimes when you have a decline like this it can really be a blessing in disguise, because you start thinking of new and innovative ways to address it,” Herzog said.

— Linda Reeves contributed to this story.

Response to
RECESSION

Innovation in budgeting has been one response to the consequences of the recession for Catholic schools in parts of the Diocese of Venice, where the downturn in the housing market has hit especially hard. Lee County has the second–highest foreclosure rate in the nation. Though there are pockets of growth, enrollment has declined about 5 percent across the diocese, said Dr. Kathleen Schwartz, diocesan director of education.

“The principals have been working together on cost–efficient practices such as doing more group purchasing and, in some cases, sharing personnel to the best advantage. In short, budgets will not be cut in the same way public schools must cut their budgets,” Schwartz said. “Our Catholic schools will continue to offer an excellent, faith–infused education and will not sacrifice anything that would affect that — not academics, athletics, the arts or other programs.”

At Pope John Paul II High School in Boca Raton in the Diocese of Palm Beach, the new school president, Dr. Michael Coury, is putting the emphasis on finding new sources of revenue to give struggling parents a break.

“As a courtesy to our families during these difficult economic times, we did not increase our tuition rate for the 2009–2010 academic year. This puts added pressure on the school to find additional sources of funding to help bridge the gap between our actual per–pupil cost and the lower amount that we charge for tuition and fees,” Dr. Coury said.

According to the National Catholic Educational Association, average tuition for a parish elementary school was $3,159 in 2008–09 and the average cost of educating each pupil was $5,870. For Catholic high schools, tuition was $8,182 and per–student costs were $10,228.

In addition to keeping tuition down, providing assistance to families who still can’t afford it is an important component for coping with the recession, several school officials said.

“Our schools are working very closely with their families to assist them in any way possible to help them afford our Catholic school tuitions,” said Dr. Nicholas Wolsonovich, secretary for faith formation/superintendent of Catholic schools for the Diocese of Orlando. “We have many generous donors who have contributed to our school scholarship programs, helping many needy families.”

— Denise O’Toole Kelly, Bob Reddy, Linda Reeves and Tanya Goodman

Enrollment
TRENDS

Between the 2005–06 and 2008–09 school years, nearly 8,300 students disappeared from the enrollment charts of Florida’s Catholic schools. While it might be easy to assume they slid over into the free public school system, it would also be wrong. Public school enrollment in Florida also began tumbling in 2006, and state economists released projections in June that suggest the cumulative loss in public school student numbers will hit 30,000 this fall. (Total Catholic school enrollment for 2008–09 was 87,802, while public school enrollment was about 2.6 million.)

The plunge followed more than a decade of steady growth in enrollment in both public and Catholic schools in Florida. Student numbers in Catholic schools grew from 75,360 in 1992–93 to 96,075 in 2005–06.

“One of the biggest factors has been the decrease in families with school–age children moving into the state. The fact that public and Catholic school enrollment has declined simultaneously suggests that Floridians are taking a hit from factors such as increased living costs and rising insurance rates,” said James Herzog, the Florida Catholic Conference associate director for education. “In a way, our state was ahead of the curve as we experienced declining enrollment after the active hurricane seasons of recent years, but complicated by the current recession.”

According to conference figures, Florida lost four Catholic elementary schools — one in the Archdiocese of Miami, two in the Diocese of St. Augustine and one in the Diocese of Pensacola–Tallahassee — between the 2007–08 and 2008–09 school years. The Diocese of Venice added a kindergarten–through–second–grade school, St. Catherine in Sebring that year.

For the coming school year, the Archdiocese of Miami announced in January that six of its elementary schools would close, affecting nearly 900 students. Since then, a seventh has decided to close before its finances could deteriorate further. Plans are in the works to convert those seven schools, plus the school that closed last year, into charter schools.

“We had only one other school closure that was announced this past year, and that was for a small K–5 school called St. Bernadette Catholic School in Panama City Beach,” Herzog said. “On a related note, there have been no closures at the secondary level as we have maintained 36 high schools (statewide).”

— Denise O’Toole Kelly

National
SITUATION

In much of the nation, Catholic schools have fared worse than in Florida.

Catholic schools experienced robust growth in the United States from 1884, when the U.S. bishops began pushing for their creation as alternatives to a public school system they saw as inhospitable to the faithful, particularly Irish and Italian immigrants. According to the National Catholic Educational Association, U.S. Catholic school enrollment reached its peak in the early 1960s, with nearly 13,000 schools serving more than 5.2 million students. By 1990, the numbers had fallen to about 2.5 million students in 8,719 schools.

Enrollment began to rebound in the 1990s. But, whereas Florida’s enrollment growth at that time averaged about 2 percent and lasted until 2006, national enrollment growth was about 1.3 percent and ended by 2000. Nationally since 2000, more than 1,400 Catholic schools have closed and enrollment has declined by more than 17 percent.

At least two major reports in the last few years have framed the situation as a crisis. The authors of “Making God Known, Loved and Served: The Future of Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools in the United States,” which is the 2006 final report of the Notre Dame Task Force on Catholic Education, posed the question “Will it be said of our generation that we presided over the demise” of Catholic schools? (Their answer is that it can be stopped.) Last year’s “Who Will Save Our Urban Catholic Schools?” from the nonprofit Thomas B. Fordham Institute points out that Catholic school closings have meant taxpayers have had to fork out $20 billion to absorb an additional 300,000 students.

In Florida, though, officials generally are not talking about a “crisis.”

“No, that wouldn’t be the word I would use. For many reasons, there’s good reason for optimism about the future for growth and viability of our schools in Florida,” said James Herzog, Florida Catholic Conference’s associate director for education said.

— Denise O’Toole Kelly

Miami’s School
CLOSINGS

Experimentation will be the theme for education in the Archdiocese of Miami this fall, as eight charter schools will be opening where Catholic schools once stood. Financial difficulties forced the closure of six of those schools at the end of this school year — Corpus Christi in Wynwood, Our Lady of Divine Providence in Sweetwater, Sacred Heart in Homestead, St. Francis Xavier in Overtown, St. Stephen in Miramar and St. Clement in Fort Lauderdale. A seventh school, St. Malachy in Tamarac, decided to close before the financial situation deteriorated further. The eighth school, St. Monica, had closed in 2008.

“We are by no means the first. There are many dioceses in the country that have gone this way already,” said Brother Richard DeMaria, a member of the Congregation of Christian Brothers, who serves as director of the archdiocesan Ministry of Christian Formation and superintendent of schools.

He pointed to the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., which began experimenting last year with charter schools, and the Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., which announced a similar program this year.

Charter schools are free, funded by public dollars, so religion cannot be taught during the school day. Unlike traditional public schools, however, charter schools operate independently of the local school board and have more leeway in managing day–to–day operations. The parishes are leasing their former school buildings to the charter schools, which means they are deriving income from the properties. They also retain the right to use the facilities after school hours.

“They’re not Catholic schools. But pastors in many cases will develop after–school programs in religious education,” Brother DeMaria said.

He was hoping the experiment with charter schools would start off slowly, in just one school, “to see how successful the after–school religious education program is.”

But the overall financial situation of the country and the archdiocese accelerated that timetable. “Now the danger is that these charter schools will take kids away from Catholic schools that are remaining open. I sure hope that doesn’t happen,” Brother DeMaria said.

— Ana Rodriguez–Soto

What’s
NEW

All over Florida, Catholic school officials are hoping a projected increase in school–age children in the state will be a boost for enrollment. A 2008 federal study projects a nearly 30 percent increase in Florida’s public school enrollment from 2005 to 2017. James Herzog, the Florida Catholic Conference’s associate director for eduation, said he sees no reason there won’t be a “mirror effect” for Catholic schools.

However, officials said they are not counting on population trends alone to carry Florida’s Catholic schools healthily into the future. Leaders from all seven dioceses in the state meet twice a year and recently updated their strategic plan, Herzog said.

That plan includes a number of steps to take full advantage of relationships with both public and private education entities, and calls for exploration of alternative models for Catholic schools.

Among those is a “stewardship model,” something the Diocese of Wichita in Kansas has used to make a free Catholic education available to every child of every active member of its 91 parishes.

“We don’t talk about tuition. We don’t even use that word,” said Father John Lanzrath, the diocese’s director of stewardship. He said the diocese sees the Catholic education of children as the responsibility of all parishioners, not just parents. All parishioners are asked to tithe 8 percent to the parish and 2 percent to charities of their choice. In some parishes, he said, 70 to 80 percent of the Sunday collection supports the parish school.

Herzog said the stewardship model is being tried on a much more limited basis in Florida.

“We’ve seen that tried and work for a local school here or there,” he said, citing Blessed Trinity School in Ocala as an example.

Another alternative model mentioned in the statewide strategic plan for Catholic schools is regionalization. That’s also being tried in the Diocese of Orlando; construction is set to begin next spring in the Oviedo area for a regional Catholic elementary school.

“This school will be an interparochial school, which means it will be supported by three area parishes,” said schools superintendent Dr. Nicholas Wolsonovich. “This is a new model for our Catholic school system, which will attract students from multiple parishes and provide an opportunity for all baptized Catholics to support the teaching ministry of the Church.”

Experiments also are being tried at the parish level. For instance, St. Andrew School in Coral Springs recently announced in a press release that it has launched “a nationwide Catholic Virtual School.”

— Denise O’Toole Kelly and Tanya Goodman

Building
CATHOLIC IDENTITY

Whatever Florida’s Catholic schools will look like in the future, officials around the state said it’s important not to change what they are.

“We’re working to strengthen our Catholic identity, and to ensure that we’re more grounded in the spiritual aspects of Catholic education, in addition to what we’ve become know for: academic excellence and a nurturing environment,” said Kevin Vickery, superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Pensacola–Tallahassee. “If we’re only seen as a Catholic version of private schools, we’ve missed the mark. We have to be unfailingly Christ–based in our approach to all aspects of education.”

For Jordan Robinson, an 8–year–old who is attending Sacred Heart School in Lake Worth with the help of a $1,000 grant from a Knights of Columbus council, that Catholic identity seems to have taken root.

“I like receiving a lot of the sacraments,” she said, when asked her favorite thing about school. “I like school a lot.”

— Denise O’Toole Kelly, Peggy DeKeyser and Linda Reeves