Catholic Group to Offer Record Tuition Amount

The Catholic Education Foundation, a philanthropic organization that provides Catholic school tuition to poor families in the Los Angeles area, will award a record $4.5 million in scholarships for the coming school year.

The awards will help disadvantaged families send 4,700 children to 227 Catholic elementary and high schools in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

“We’ve been providing opportunities since the program started, but there have always been more families wanting to send kids to Catholic schools than resources,” said Hugh J. Ralston, the foundation’s executive director.

Strong interest from low-income parents in the foundation’s grants reflects the extent to which families of all economic stripes are seeking alternatives to the nation’s troubled public schools.

Last year, the Children’s Scholarship Fund--launched by billionaire financier Theodore J. Forstmann and John T. Walton, son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton--awarded 40,000 partial scholarships, including 3,750 in Los Angeles, to help low-income families send children to private schools. Nearly half the Los Angeles recipients chose to enroll offspring in Catholic schools.

Supported by annual donations from individuals, foundations and corporations, the Catholic Education Foundation has an endowment of $82 million. All contributions go directly to support scholarships for low-income children, the foundation said.

The foundation was started in 1988 by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles. In its first year, the fund allocated $500,000 to 740 children. All told, it has awarded more than $28 million in scholarships to 37,000 children.

Its goal is to raise $2 million in the coming year, with a long-range intention of boosting the number of scholarships to 7,500. This year’s total is 8% higher than the amount awarded for the 1999-2000 school year.

Without the foundation’s tuition aid, Nicaragua-born Yadira Menjivar said, she and her husband, Miguel, could not afford to send their two children to St. John the Evangelist School in South-Central Los Angeles.

Menjivar said the 275-student school on Crenshaw Boulevard is a safe haven for her youngsters--Evelyn, a sixth-grader, and Jose, a second-grader. She believes that they are learning more than they would in a public school.

“I feel like this is a better education because they have books, and they can bring them home,” Menjivar said, noting that students in public schools often are not allowed to take books off school grounds.

But paying even half the school fees is difficult for them, Menjivar said, given that Miguel, a maintenance worker, usually makes less than $30,000 a year.

Next year, the school will charge about $1,800 a year for students whose parents tithe at the church or $2,450 for those whose parents do not. The school, which runs from kindergarten through eighth grade, offers discounts for siblings, said Principal Carla D. Cotton.

The Los Angeles archdiocese runs one of the largest private school systems in the nation, with about 100,000 students in 279 schools.

For the last decade, enrollment has remained stable. The percentage of non-Catholics also has been consistent at about 13%. But interest this year from recipients of Children’s Scholarship Fund awards resulted in about 1,200 new students for the schools, Ralston said.

The diocese has several thousand seats still available in schools in lower-income areas, said Jerome R. Porath, superintendent of schools for the archdiocese.

But Catholic institutions in middle- and upper-income neighborhoods are full, with waiting lists.

“We have not kept up with demand,” Porath said, adding that the archdiocese has no plans to build new schools at this time because costs for land and construction are prohibitive.

Low-income families interested in Catholic Education Foundation scholarships must apply at a school. Applications are reviewed by principals, who rank them based on need, school participation, academic promise and other factors. The principals then submit the applications to the foundation, which verifies financial need.