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The following first appeared as an op-ed commentary in the Staten Island Advance. It is reprinted with permission.
As the pastor of a Catholic parish here on Staten Island, as well as the Board Chairman of the Catholic School Region of Staten Island, I have a unique perspective on the issues, both parish and school, contained in your article. I can tell you that the reorganization of the structure of our Staten Island Catholic Regional Schools, although a challenging undertaking, is reaping benefits already.
Many people, even some of our own Catholic school families, are unaware that the tuition charged in our schools only covers a little over half of the actual costs to educate our students. (By the way, our costs are less than half the cost to educate each child in the New York City public schools.) The regional structure is helping us manage costs more efficiently and to uncover new streams of revenue, which help fund that difference between actual cost to operate and what is collected in tuition revenue.
Unfortunately, not all of that gap can be generated from our new way of operating, so the parishes are needed to assist in helping our schools get closer to a break-even situation. In the past, the parish schools needed to be funded completely by the parishioners of the church whose school shared its name. In other words Parish “A” would be solely responsible for funding the deficit of School “A.” At that time a parish without a school would have no financial burden of helping support a school, even though the families within that parish could send their children to a neighboring parish school and benefit from the quality education for which we have been always known.
When His Eminence, Cardinal Dolan, first introduced our new school initiative, “Pathways to Excellence,” aimed at keeping our Catholic school system in the Archdiocese of New York financially viable for the long term, he spoke of the fact that we have to begin to look at all of our Catholic schools belonging to all of our parishioners. The time that a single parish could be expected to support a Catholic school on its own was a concept that no longer could work and a thing of the past. Yes, there is sacrifice that needs to be made to ensure that our Catholic schools survive, and in turn our Church survives for the long term, through its youth, who are our future. However, that sacrifice must be shared by all of us as we move forward in order to realize the promise of a bright, faith-filled future, made up of the youth of today, those students who sit in the classrooms of our Catholic schools.
The financial advantage, to parishes with schools, in this new sharing concept is that those parishes no longer have to foot the bill for covering deficits of their schools all by themselves. These deficits can exceed $100,000 and, in some cases, over $200,000 per school, annually. Now, these parishes with schools are usually asked to contribute one-half or less of those deficit figures in the form of school assessments.
As the pastor of St. Charles Church in Oakwood for over 10 years now, I also know the challenges we are facing as pastors in meeting our own financial responsibilities. We have all seen a downturn in the size of our collections. This is not attributable to our school operations as much as it is to the difficult financial conditions that our families on Staten Island have encountered in the past eight years or so. That coupled with the devastation of Super Storm Sandy in 2012 has been our most difficult challenge. My parish alone has lost an estimated 300 families due to relocation after Sandy. Yes, we have to ask for increased giving at times, and this is one of those times. We only ask for “those who can” to try to give more. Don’t forget that the local parishes are also in the business of helping those who “can’t” by maintaining food pantries, clothing distribution programs and community outreach programs of the physical and emotional nature. This was never evidenced more than in the days and months following Sandy. Our parishes became safe havens for those seeking anything from a cup of hot coffee and a cell phone charge to those who needed relocation services. We are very grateful that, through the generosity of our parishioners whom we call on almost constantly to help us, we are able to continue to do these good works, which is our true mission.
We as pastors and parishioners have experienced tough times in the past and have come through those even stronger than when we entered them and, by the Grace of God, we will do that this time and long into the future.
Msgr. Thomas Bergin, former vicar for education in the archdiocese, is pastor of St. Charles parish on Staten Island.
