The news that the private all-girls Mother Cabrini High School in Washington Heights will close this spring, after 115 years, is a sad development.
As the principal of a Catholic school in Harlem that I attended as a child, I know first-hand the difference a quality Catholic school can make in a child’s life. That’s why something must be done to end the Catholic school-closure crisis.
The Archdiocese has tried to stabilize Catholic school enrollment through consolidations and restructurings. As part of that effort, the school I run is part of a new innovative partnership between the Archdiocese and the nonprofit Partnership for Inner-City Education.
These are important steps — but we still need to address a simple issue: Many of the families who now live near our Catholic schools can’t afford to pay what we must charge in tuition.
That’s the core problem even though Catholic tuition is remarkably low, around $4,000 at the elementary level. This is a small fraction of the cost of educating the same student in a public-school setting. And Catholic schools — at this much lower cost — post a 97 percent graduation rate.
One answer to the financial issue facing parents would be the adoption of a state Education Investment Tax Credit, as a bill now working its way through the Legislature would allow. This would increase the tax incentives for individuals and businesses to make charitable donations to nonprofit groups that offer scholarships for students to attend Catholic, Jewish and other private schools.
In an even-handed way, the tax credit would also encourage donations to public schools, nonprofits that do educational programming within our public schools and even teacher-selected classroom projects. (Well-regarded organizations like DonorsChoose now make it easy for anyone to give to help students across the country.) The credit would also be available to teachers to reimburse them for their out-of-pocket expenses for classroom supplies.
For families who want to choose Catholic schools, additional scholarship money would make the dream of a quality education a reality.
A number of students at my school get scholarships through the Children’s Scholarship Fund, chaired by Mike McCurry, the former press secretary to President Bill Clinton. I know first-hand that these kids couldn’t attend my school without this help. And there’s a long waiting list of other children who also seek the very same opportunity.
Because there aren’t enough scholarships to go around, the hopes of many families are being shattered and many good schools are being forced to close.
Since 2011, the Archdiocese of New York has closed 56 schools; 218 schools remain. Just since 2006, Catholic school enrollment in the city’s five boroughs has shrunk by a staggering 34,000 students.
The problem’s statewide: In Buffalo, the diocese announced the closure of another 10 schools in Western New York.
Students enrolled in the Archdiocese schools in New York City are 93 percent nonwhite; 70 percent are from households below the federal poverty line, and more than a third are not Catholic.
That could explain why the Education Investment Tax Credit had drawn such intense support from state legislators who represent the poorest parts of our city. More than 90 percent of the Assembly members of the Black and Hispanic Caucus co-sponsor the Education Investment Tax Credit bill.
One of the strongest supporters has been state Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, who represents a district that includes The Bronx and Mount Vernon. At a 5,000-person rally for the bill, she explained that she and many of her colleagues support the bill “because we want to invest in all children, be they in public, parochial or independent schools.”
As the governor and Legislature consider universal pre-K, record increases in school aid, $2 billion in bonded technology upgrades and $2 billion in multiyear tax cuts, let’s do what Sen. Hassell-Thompson recommended and “invest in all
children” by approving the Education Investment Tax Credit.
Antwan Allen is the principal of St. Mark the Evangelist School on West 138th Street.