Scholarship fund Why is funding needed for schools at this time? The Catholic school system of the Archdiocese of Chicago is essential to the health and vitality of the Catholic Church and the Chicago area community. Catholic schools give young people a firm foundation for life by providing them with both strong academics and the fundamentals of their faith. Catholic schools also perform a profoundly important civic function by grounding students, both Catholic and those from other faith traditions, in the virtues that produce responsible members of society. The Catholic school system in the Chicago area is the only significant alternative to the public school system in Chicago. Catholic schools in Chicago outperform local public options in almost every neighborhood based on test score comparisons. The Chicago area Catholic school system currently requires about $25 million of operating subsidies per year from the Archdiocese. This is not sustainable. The Strategic Plan for Catholic Schools, developed by the Archdiocesan School Board, outlines an approach to reduce this subsidy by at least $15 million, through a combination of operating improvements and scholarship fund disbursements. How will the scholarship fund make the school system more sustainable economically? Today, many families would like to send their children to a Catholic school, but they are not able to afford the cost of tuition. Accordingly, many schools have empty seats and are operating below the scale required to be financially secure. The combination of the scholarship fund and the tuition that families can afford will bring significant revenue to schools, making them more sustainable. Our school system is very cost-effective. The cost per student in our Catholic elementary schools is $4,500 versus $13,500 in public schools. The challenge of our system is revenue. Our schools would be financially secure if there was more funding, through either tuition dollars, scholarship funding or other revenue, to offset the costs incurred. Evidence from experiments in Chicago, as well as from broad-scale approaches in other areas such as the Indiana voucher program, suggests significant demand from families for Catholic schools if tuition were more affordable. We believe the scholarship fund will enable many of our schools to increase enrollment, increase overall tuition revenue and become financially sustainable. How will the scholarship fund work? Qualifying schools will be identified by the archdiocese, and children attending these schools will be able to apply. A school can qualify if it has limited ability to provide its own support for students with need; if it is committed to financial best practice and transparency; and if it is willing to adhere to the archdiocese’s financial aid process. Families will be required to complete a standardized application form, and scholarships will be provided on a need-basis only. Scholarships will be renewable each year that the child is in Catholic school. Scholarships will be provided to individual students at qualifying schools. These scholarships will move with students if they transfer to different Catholic schools in the archdiocese. For now, we expect schools in wealthier communities to be able to provide their own financial support for needy families in their communities. We expect to broaden the availability of scholarships to all schools as the scholarship fund develops. Which children will benefit from the scholarship fund? The scholarship fund will benefit all children desiring a Catholic education in qualifying schools who cannot afford the tuition. Beneficiaries will be Catholic as well as non-Catholic; from very poor communities as well as from lower middle-income communities who still cannot afford the tuition. Over the next few years, the scholarship fund is projected to enable between 5,000 and 7,500 children to attend a Catholic school who cannot afford to do so today. Given the dynamic growth of the Hispanic population in the Chicago area, the scholarship fund will create opportunities for thousands of Latino children to receive strong faith formation and high quality academic preparation. Already, 20 percent of our enrollment consists of Hispanic students. How is the scholarship fund different from what Big Shoulders does? Big Shoulders has been an important partner to our schools, and we are grateful for all of Big Shoulders’ valuable support over the years. We look forward to continued partnership with Big Shoulders in the future. We are establishing our own scholarship fund for a number of reasons. First, the financial need is much greater than what Big Shoulders can provide. We need to develop additional sources of funding. Big Shoulders currently provides about 30 percent of the total external aid required for our schools; the archdiocese has been providing the other 70 percent. The archdiocese cannot sustain funding at this rate without the financial support of the community. Second, our scholarship fund will benefit a broader group of children who are not currently part of the Big Shoulders-designated schools. This includes schools in the city as well as in the suburbs; it also includes schools in communities that would not be considered lower-income, but where many families nonetheless struggle to afford Catholic school tuition. The archdiocese and Big Shoulders will work together to award scholarships so that some families do not receive duplicative awards and so that all qualifying families are able to receive funding. Big Shoulders and the archdiocese already have experience coordinating on scholarships in a more limited way, and Big Shoulders already coordinates with other scholarship charities as well. Will the Chicago area Catholic school system need to close many schools, as other dioceses have done? Our school system faces many of the same challenges that other dioceses face. However, we have a strong basis for hope that we are creating a more viable system. First, there are examples throughout our diocese, in rich and poor communities alike, of thriving schools with full enrollment. We also know that schools that are not doing as well are often missing important skills, such as marketing and finance, at the local level. One of the main objectives of our Strategic Plan for Catholic Schools is to provide the operating leadership and support to these other schools. Second, the scholarship fund is intended to provide the critically necessary funding to make these schools financially sustainable in a way they could not achieve by themselves. At the same time, we know that some schools will need to close over time: demographic changes in some communities have resulted in a low student population; some schools have significant capital repair needs that may force us to look for alternative sites; some schools seem very difficult to turn around. While we know that some schools may need to close over time, we are hopeful we can ensure a strong and vital system with most of our schools as we implement our Strategic Plan. If a school does close, children will be able to transfer their scholarships to any other Catholic school in the archdiocese. Can you ensure that the funds will be used only as originally intended by donors? Yes, we can. You may contribute funds that you would like to be used for scholarships for Catholic education to the Catholic Education Scholarship Trust, which was established in 2013. Funds from this trust legally can only be used for scholarships for Catholic education. There are also limits specified in the trust regarding the amount of funding that can be used at any given time to ensure that the fund is preserved for generations to come. We can provide more details for those interested. If you wish to donate funds through this campaign for other purposes (i.e., for academic program enhancements, for religious education, for capital repairs), you may contribute these funds to the Archdiocese, c/o To Teach Who Christ Is Campaign. These funds will be placed in restricted accounts at the archdiocese until they are spent. We will provide annual reporting to donors on the use of these funds. What will happen to the scholarship trust funds if Illinois permits the use of vouchers or tax credits to facilitate school choice? Vouchers would likely pay only a portion of the true cost to educate. Scholarship funding might still be needed even if Illinois does facilitate school choice in the future. If scholarship funding were truly no longer needed, the trust stipulates that the funds need to be used for the support of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Program enhancements for Catholic schools How will the $8 million be spent? The major initiatives as detailed in the Archdiocesan School Board’s Strategic Plan for Catholic Schools have the power to drive change in all Catholic schools in Cook and Lake counties. Three priorities have been singled out for special attention: 1. The Leadership Academy to attract, recruit, compensate, train, retain and award worldclass principals who implement best practice for Catholic community, academic excellence, and fiscal stability at each site. Strong leadership is the best predictor of school success; with replacements and retirements, this priority is critical in the next three years. 2. The “new schools” model program allows schools to reinvent themselves using blended learning (on-line courses with expert teacher coaching). The program focuses on area needs such as early childhood, inclusive education, year round schools, Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM), and accelerated programs. These model programs not only impact teacher quality, but add to school marketability. 3. Funding to ensure that the Office of Catholic Schools is organized and staffed to effectively implement the Strategic Plan. One key new addition will be a senior position focused on operations with direct authority over the performance of schools. In addition, the Strategic Plan calls for a group of regional directors who each have responsibility for the performance of a certain number of schools. The regional directors will report to the person in the senior operating position, along with marketing and finance. Religious education programs Why is funding needed at the archdiocesan level for religious education? With more than 90,000 children and teens enrolled in parish religious education programs, we need to ensure that we have well-trained catechetical leaders at the parish level to ensure strong faith formation of our young parishioners. Many parishes cannot afford the training and certification programs required to develop these leaders. These funds will be used to offer scholarships to existing catechetical leaders as well as people interested in becoming catechetical leaders. In addition, some parishes do not have the funding to develop strong programs in religious education and faith formation. Some of these funds will be used to provide grants to parishes to offer faith formation programs, such as a speaker series for adults or a family faith formation program. What are you trying to achieve with the development of “next generation” programs? We know that many families are not attending Mass regularly, and many of these are also not sending their children to religious education classes. We also know advances in communications and technology might enable us to approach our programs differently. We would like to use this time in our church to reexamine religious education in the context of the new evangelization. We will explore questions such as: “How can we use our religious education programs to re-propose the Gospel to families with infrequent faith practice?”; “How can we address family faith formation in addition to the formation of children?”; “Can we use technology and communications to develop new approaches to religious education?” Capital needs Will the $30 million target cover all of the capital needs in the archdiocese? The $30 million targeted for capital needs likely covers only a modest portion of the capital repair needs in the archdiocese. In addition to these proceeds, though, there will be other sources of funding for capital repairs: a) the parish-based campaign will generate millions of dollars that individual parishes can use for their own capital repair needs; b) parishes in wealthier communities are being asked to consider the needs of parishes in lower income communities as they develop their case statements; and c) the archdiocese maintains an annual budget to assist parishes with capital needs. Nevertheless, additional funding will likely be required over time to assist parishes with their capital needs. What types of buildings will be covered by this fund? This capital repair fund will support projects at school and church buildings. How will the $30 million be allocated across the archdiocese? The archdiocese is focused on making sure the $30 million is used effectively and has developed guidelines to ensure that these funds are allocated to the best uses. In particular, parishes and schools can qualify for this funding only if they: a) demonstrate vitality as evidenced by Mass attendance or enrollment; b) are located in communities without the means to raise the money themselves; and c) do not require such substantial funding that the viability of the entire building is in question. Overall, these funds will be allocated to projects that secure the long-term safety of the building.