Catholic Schools Week – Cause for celebration?

Published on February 2nd, 2012

By Jim Cultrara

Catholic Schools Week, Jan. 29 – Feb 4, has given us an opportunity to celebrate the enormous contributions that Catholic schools have made and continue to make in New York State and indeed across the entire country.  Our schools are an integral part of a pluralistic educational system that serves a diverse population and in doing so, they continue to help educate and form children into loving, productive and responsible adults – the kind of adult that is the foundation of solid families, businesses and our citizenry.  

Moreover, Catholic schools, like all other religious and independent schools, are a gargantuan gift to taxpayers because of the billions of tax dollars that are saved by not having to educate these children in public schools.  The source of that gift, however is traced back to the parents who struggle to make tuition payments for their children’s education  — not to mention the teachers, administrators and staff of Catholic schools who endure a salary lower than what their taxpayer-supported counterparts in public schools receive.    Think about that for a moment.  Tuition-paying parents not only pay income, property and sales taxes that support public schools, but their tuition dollars support the salaries (and therefore, income, property and sales taxes) of the teachers, administrators and staff who run the Catholic schools.    The government, in turn, collects those taxes and uses those dollars to support, among other things, public schools.    And what do these parents get in return for their gift to the state?   That’s a good question to ask of your elected representatives.

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