Parochial schools' parents crying foul over budget cuts

By Kate Pastor

Religious school leaders and parents are furious about proposed cuts to independent and parochial schools in the state budget.

According to Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for the state’s budget division, Gov. David Paterson’s 2009-2010 budget eliminates reimbursements for the Comprehensive Attendance Program (CAP) for nonpublic schools, amounting to $44.5 million or about a 35 percent reduction in total state funding for private schools.

CAP money was first allocated to private schools under Governor Eliot Spitzer during the 2007-2008 fiscal year to fund a requirement to take attendance before each period. It is widely acknowledged that taking attendance does not incur specific costs, but school leaders say that money from the program has already been budgeted and spent, and the reductions amount to an unfair burden on families who chose a private education.

“When I’m sending my kids to parochial schools I’m still spending tax dollars that public schools are using even though my children don’t go to public schools,” said April DeBard, parent of a second grader, a fifth grader and a seventh grader at St. Gabriel School and chairperson of the Home School Association there. “It’s like you’re being penalized for sending your kids to parochial schools.”

Ms. DeBard, who also has a child enrolled at Fordham Preparatory School, said an increase in tuition would make it even harder for her to afford her kids’ education.

St. Gabriel School Principal Deborah Pitula says that is exactly what cuts will lead to.

“If they cut mandated services, then our tuition would have to be raised because tuition is really our only source of funding other than this mandated service reimbursement,” she said, adding, “somehow we would have to make up the shortfall.”

In anticipation of the cuts, approximately 40 parents and school leaders from the West Bronx Catholic Schools — including St. Margaret of Cortona, Visitation School and St. John's School — came to an information session at St. Gabriel School on Feb. 26, where Paul Lynch, head of the government programs and public policy for the Archdiocese of New York, set out to explain the cuts.

The Orthodox Union also joined with 50 communal and day school leaders from across the state to rally against the cuts in Albany. The Salanter Akiba Riverdale High School was expected to join them, but couldn’t make it, said spokesman Howie Beigelman.

CAP funding was first implemented to address the problem of kids cutting school but is now considered unnecessary, Mr. Gordon, the state budget official, said. “The problems of truancy were not identified as being as serious in nonpublic schools as they are in public schools,” he said.

This is part of the March 12, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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