Closing and Spending
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
News that the Archdiocese of New York will close 14 schools in the region is being greeted with dismay by parents who have come to rely on the schools as an escape hatch from the city’s public monopoly. News that a budget deal in Albany may send billions of additional dollars for capital projects alone to the city schools sparked celebration in some quarters. The two events aren’t directly linked, but they’re related.
Although many factors account for the Church’s decision – many of those schools are affiliated with parishes being closed due to declining attendance – higher public school spending is putting the squeeze on parochial institutions. Without the new aid from Albany, the city already spends about $18,000 on each student including capital expenditures. Catholic high schools spend a third of that while facing many similar challenges, including aging school buildings.
The public system, under pressure from unions, directs a lot of that money to salaries. Long-time Catholic school teachers rarely earn much more than $40,000 a year, about the salary for a rookie in the government system. Meantime, Catholic schools need to work harder than ever before to attract lay teachers as the number of priests and nuns is shrinking – religious now constitute only about 12% of the teachers in the city’s Catholic schools. The public schools are spending their Catholic competitors into a staffing crunch.
The Catholic school closures had been in the works for a long time and were not influenced by the most recent budget debate in Albany. But before lawmakers sign off on enormous new school expenditures, they might consider that throwing even more money at public schools could, in the long run, hurt the only schools in the city that have consistently succeeded at educating the city’s most at-risk students.
Or lawmakers could push for vouchers. Rather than shaking down taxpayers to send billions of dollars to public schools that already spend a king’s ransom, Albany could let parents decide, sending, in the process, some desperately needed cash to schools that could actually use it.
