Chicagoland

$2 million supporting 622 students

By Michelle Martin | Staff Writer
Sunday, November 24, 2013

Sometimes, just a little bit can make a big difference. That’s one of the lessons Catholic school officials are learning as they roll out their Caritas Scholars program.

Funded by an anonymous donor, the program brings together the Office for Catholic Schools, the schools themselves and families who need some help to afford Catholic education. The pilot program will provide $2 million in needs-based scholarships for three years; at the end of the pilot, the archdiocese plans to provide $6 million a year, to be generated from the $150 million fund the archdiocese expects to raise from the “To Teach Who Christ Is” campaign.

Scholarships can cover no more than half the tuition for each student, with the rest of the cost to be paid by the family, and they are available only to students new to Catholic schools.

This year, the scholarships are supporting 622 students in 56 schools in the city and suburbs.

Tammy Klekner, principal at St. Joseph School in Round Lake, said she was able to give Caritas scholarships to 19 of the school’s 207 students this year. Some receive half the $3,600 tuition; some receive less.

“It’s really made a difference for us,” said Klekner, who is in her first year as principal at the school. “It especially helped for families who made the decision to send their kids here later in the summer, or even the first couple of weeks of school. We have an internal financial aid program, but by then, all of the internal financial aid had been allocated.”

The Caritas Scholars program aims to help schools with strong leadership and academics and good student life, said K.K. Nielsen Cleand, enrollment marketing consultant for the Office for Catholic Schools. The schools also must be willing to partner with the archdiocese and with the families.

For their part, the families must submit financial information to demonstrate need, and they must sign a contract to pay the rest of the tuition and to meet any other school obligations.

For example, St. Joseph requires families to provide 24 hours of volunteer service each year. If they do that, they can renew the scholarship for a total of three years, Cleand said.

The three-year pilot will help the archdiocese adjust the plan to meet its goal of generating incremental enrollment gains that will stabilize the financial viability of the Catholic schools and strengthen their ability to deliver a rigorous, engaging and faithfilled educational program to their communities.

The families that come into the schools using the scholarship will strengthen the schools not only with their tuition money, but also by becoming active members of their school communities.

“We are trying to attract families who really value Catholic education,” Cleand said.

The response from those who received scholarships indicates to Cleand that it worked.

“We got thank-you notes from people, we got sticky notes on contracts saying thank you so much, we couldn’t have done this without this,” Cleand said.

She also hopes the program will serve as a model for schools who want to do their own financial aid program.

While the scholarships can help many people, they will not help families who can’t pay at all for Catholic schools, Cleand noted.

As funds are raised from parishes participating in the “To Teach Who Christ Is” campaign over the next three years, 60 percent will remain in the parish and 40 percent will go to the archdiocese. A percentage of the monies going to the archdiocese will be directed to the scholarship fund, which is expected to generate $6 million for scholarships each year once it reaches $150 million.

For more about the “To Teach Who Christ Is” campaign, visit www.toteachwhochristis.org.

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