Denver, Colo., Jul 14, 2020 / 02:50 pm (CNA).- Though federal rule makers have clarified that coronavirus relief funds must help non-public schools, including Catholic schools, Catholic school advocates and other backers of private schools are working to rally support to ensure aid is distributed in a way that benefits all students.
Elias Moo, superintendent of the Archdiocese of Denver Catholic schools, said CARES Act funds could be critical to school operations. Schools need masks, funds for more cleaning services, and access to technology for school needs including remote learning.
“Our Catholic schools have been really hard-hit, as have families impacted by the pandemic,” Moo said. A drop in tuition payments has harmed school revenue, and schools linked to parishes have been hurt by declines in donations to the parish offertory.
Moo said that federal coronavirus school assistance should aid students in both private and public schools, and that some parish schools are depending on the help.
“We want to open our facilities in a safe and healthy manner but we also know that there are financial challenges. Without this funding, it will be a real challenge for some schools to be able to open effectively and safely,” he told CNA.
“Private schools have been impacted by COVID-19 at the same rate as public schools have, and in some cases more heavily,” Ross Izard, national director of public policy with the private school scholarship fundraiser and school choice advocate ACE Scholarships, told CNA July 10.
“These schools are hurting. They’re in need of help. They’re in need of aid,” said Izard. His Colorado-based ACE Scholarships works to provide partial tuition scholarships to K-12 private schools for low-income families. It also advocates for school choice. The organization is active in eight states and served 7,000 children in 800 schools in 2019.
The interim rule’s goal, according to Izard, is equity, the need to ensure “the same treatment for private school students as public school students.”
ACE Scholarships has asked its supporters, its families, partner schools and partner advocacy groups to circulate a letter and submit comment to the federal government in support of private school support.
“COVID-19 has devastated all sectors of education, and private schools have not been spared,” the letter says. “These schools, many of which are small and lack the resources of larger school districts, are struggling to safely and effectively serve their families as a result of the pandemic.”
“For many private schools, CARES Act equitable services will provide the emergency assistance needed to ensure that students can return this fall for a safe, successful school year. These schools should be entitled to a full, fair share of CARES aid in accordance with the law and previous U.S. Department of Education Guidance.”
The rule is open for a 30-day comment period, ending July 31. Izard said that people “have an opportunity to make their voices heard.”
“We are anticipating that the folks who are opposed to private schools generally, or to school choice, are going to participate at a very high level in that public comment campaign,” he said. “We want to make sure the U.S. Department of Education is hearing from the schools and the families in the private sector about how important that aid is to them.”
The Department of Education rule was previously non-binding guidance. Since funds are distributed through state and local education agencies, education officials in several states had ruled that private schools would receive fewer funds than many schools deemed sufficient.
In early June, before the new federal rule was announced, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference asked the U.S. Department of Education to reverse state decisions that gave insufficient coronavirus relief funds to Catholic and other private schools
Before the guidance became a mandatory rule, the Colorado Catholic Conference had circulated an action alert objecting to Colorado officials’ decisions. Education officials had disregarded federal guidance in a way that withheld relief funds for Catholic schools, the conference said.
“Without a fair share of relief funding for our Catholic schools, our already financially stretched Catholic schools will be faced with an additional hardship in trying to absorb the expenses needed to ensure schools can reopen safely and continue to provide a quality education to students in the midst of a pandemic,” said the action alert.
Brittany Vessely, executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, explained the motivation behind continued advocacy for relief aid to Catholic schools.
“We’re talking about being treated equitably and fairly based upon a pandemic that has impacted everybody,” she told CNA. “We want to make sure that relief funding gets to our schools and to our students.”
“All families have been impacted by the coronavirus, we are all in this together,” she said. Any state or local education agency that tries to block funding to non-public schools, she said, is being “discriminatory” against families that have chosen these schools as “the best education option for their child.”
Relief funds in the large east Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado are distributed through the Aurora School District, one of the largest districts in the state. But the school district decided to postpone a decision until December.
In Aurora, the postponement meant a loss of “significant funding” Catholic schools were expecting, said Moo, who worried other districts in the state might delay the provision of resources.
“Now we’re scrambling to figure out how to pay for certain things that are needed from the first day of school, when students are back,” said Moo, adding that the Catholic archdiocesan schools are considering how to fund raise for some of the costs.
Corey Christiansen, public information officer for Aurora Public Schools, told CNA that the Colorado Department of Education has set December as the deadline for the allocation of these funds.
“Guidance on COVID-19 related federal funds has been limited in general and has changed several times since the original allocations were made,” he said. “We intend to apply and hope that additional clarification from Congress, the U.S. Department of Education or (Colorado Department of Education) helps clarify guidance prior to the December deadline.”
Jeremy Meyer, director of communications for the Colorado Department of Education, told CNA that in the department’s view, the CARES Act requires that local education agencies “must provide equitable services to students and teachers in non-public schools, not direct funding.” Control of the federal funds must remain with the local agency. Calculations for these services have been “in flux” due to differences between the act’s language and the federal guidance.
“The reality of education is that it’s an ecosystem,” Izard told CNA, who added both public and private schools serve the same neighborhoods and the same people.
“What happens to one sector is going to impact the other sector,” he added. “If private schools don’t get what they need in the form of emergency aid, and they’re not able to effectively serve their students, those students have to go somewhere.”
“That can result in really significant costs on taxpayers and on the public system.”
Moo echoed Izard’s description of schools as an ecosystem.
“We really see ourselves as collaborators with public forms of education in the overall educational efforts in our state,” Moo told CNA. “In this educational educational ecosystem, here in Colorado in particular, we would say there is a symbiotic relationship between public and non-public education.”
“Our mutual strength ultimately ensures that children in Colorado are properly educated,” he said.
Under the new federal rule, two options are provided for local authorities. The first option requires that if a local education agency uses CARES Act funds for students in all its public schools, it must calculate funds for private schools based on all students enrolled in private schools in the district.
Under the second option, a local agency may choose to use funds only for students in both public and private schools with a high concentration of low income students, a program known as Title I.
According to Vessely, 17 states have decided to distribute funds proportionate to all private school students, while 21 states will follow the option to distribute funds proportionate to Title I beneficiaries in public and private schools.
Five states, California, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, and Wisconsin, have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, claiming that the federal rule unlawfully interprets the CARES Act in a way that diverts relief funds from public schools to private schools.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said July 7 the lawsuit is “about stopping the Trump administration’s latest effort to steal from working families to give it to the very privileged”
Department of Education Press Secretary Angela Morabito said that “this pandemic affected all students, and the CARES Act requires that funding should be used to help all students.”
In Vessely’s view, the states’ lawsuit is unlikely to succeed.
“The majority of this country is not going the lawsuit route,” she said. There’s not a lot of precedent for them to win something like that.”
Vessely said that Catholic schools in Colorado serve a large number of low-income students.
Moo noted the high number of schools providing federal nutrition programs… and some schools serve a high percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch programs.
“This idea that our schools are for the wealthy or the affluent is not entirely rooted in the reality we live everyday.” he said, pointing to Catholic school success in helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds to close gaps in achievement with public school peers.
Moo said Catholic education is “an education rooted in cultivating the virtues.”
“That’s for everyone, not just the affluent,” he added.
The National Catholic Education Association has said Catholic schools should be included in the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, known as the HEROES Act, which is now before Congress.
Ten percent of any new Covid-19 education funding should go to emergency grants to low- and middle-income private school families, the organization said. Both private and public schools have been hard hit by the epidemic and its economic effects, and any children who are forced to enroll in public school would further burden the public school system.
The NCEA is also advocating a “comprehensive” federal tax credit to ensure long-term funds for education.
[…]
Sadly, The Times signed their names erroneously. The 1971 letter listed them properly. These “Lords” (peers) are members of the upper chamber of British parliament but not one is an aristocrat. All appointed due to their service in arts, culture, commerce, social justice, etc. and especially music and drama.
entitling the article “British lords” just compounds the error.
I think it’s disgusting that CNA gives traction to ANY statement regarding the Catholic Church and its liturgical expression to the British who turned apostate almost to a man 500 years ago.
Just to illustrate the cultural and moral absurdity of paying attention to anything the British House of Lords has to say about the Catholic Church, the lead-in to the CNA article refers to them as: “A distinguished cadre of British public figures.” Bianca Jagger is distinguished? Now really! I think the folks over at CNA who write such nonsense ought to be fired.
The ears of the Vatican have been deaf to the voices of Catholics who desire the Latin Mass to continue. Perhaps they’ll experience an “ephphatha” moment, however, if non-Catholic celebrities desire it to continue. The current regime seems big on celebrities.
I confess I don’t know what to make of this.
What to make of this? Well, there might be another shoe to fall. Try this…
One of the signatories to the letter is the Catholic Julian Fellowes, writer of the “Downton Abbey” popular TV series—where the last lines of the last episode effectively cast the entire series on British social change as an apologetic for inevitable social and cultural acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. As with possible further quarantining of TLM, even binary human sexuality and marriage (and Humanae Vitae?) are already secularly redefined and scripted as just another museum piece.
So, as a possible Vaticanista response to the British House of Lords, TLM as just another “‘magnificent’ cultural artifact” for the museums…very synodal, that.
The simple fact that Francis is trying to abolish a form of worship that has been with us for almost 2,000 years – Need anything more be said?
Stop this “Mass of Ages” nonsense. Be more nuanced. Take the difference between “essence” and “form.” The Mass in its “essence” (meal, sacrifice, real presence) is unchanged for 2,000 years. Through this span of time it has undergone reforms in its “form” (ritual order, ceremonial flow, languages). The essence of the Novus Ordo (1969 Missal) is the same as that of the Vetus Ordo (1962 Missal). The form of the Vetus Ordo is not 2,000 years old.
Why, may I ask, do people get up at 5 in the morning EVERY SUNDAY and set out for the Latin Mass 100 miles away, on the way passing by a church – only 5 miles from their home – where the Novus Ordo is celebrated?
What is the ‘Vetus Ordo’?
In conclusion – “This is a painful and confusing prospect, especially for the growing number of YOUNG CATHOLICS, WHOSE FAITH HAS BEEN NURTURED BY IT.” (EM)
I noticed you placed meal before sacrifice. The mass is first and foremost the same sacrifice that Christ went through but in a non physical way. The old mass express that clearly, the new mass subdues it for ecumenical consideration. By the way, the two liturgies are not the same.
Good for Tom Holland and God bless him. I’ve enjoyed listening to his podcasts: The Rest is History.
What’s the point? Is it to achieve uniformity, to dispose the faithful to a new hermeneutic of Gospel perspectives? Or is it more, that the TLM is emblematic of an inadmissible past destined for annihilation, as are doctrines condemning homosexuality, the requirement to bear the cross for repentance of sins, conversion of manners for reception of the holy Eucharist, the essential nature of the Mass as sacrifice?
Why doesn’t His Holiness speak clearly on this straining issue within the universal Church? We are dismayed, we are cast into darkness while a Roman pontiff presides at a distance as if possessed of superior knowledge while the sacrifice of the Mass is offered [was the same when presiding during the Vatican lawn worship of an Amazonian idol a portent of this moment?]. Is the doctrine of Christ’s bloody sacrifice a retention of an expired past?
Pope Francis possesses the authority to eliminate what is emblematic of a long, sacred history of worship, witness by the blood of our martyrs. But he has zero authority to change the hearts of the faithful from authentic worship of our crucified Lord.
MIND-BOGGLING TRAGEDY OR CRIMINALITY (for which we must thank God)
Can we be honest?
The whole history of the Church since the early 1960s (excepting a few saintly, heroic individuals who are widely disparaged or forgotten) is one big mind-boggling tragedy, or moral crime.
Only the decades-long Communist domination of Russia and Eastern Europe is comparable, in my mind.
Well, I can think of one other comparable situation in U.S. history:
In the 1940s and 1950s, Congressional and FBI investigations into covert Communist influence in Hollywood lead to hundreds of Communist screenwriters, actors, and directors being blacklisted (meaning none of the movie studios would hire them).
But by the 1960s, all the formerly blacklisted Communists were welcomed back into Hollywood as heroes and martyrs, and Hollywood began producing an endless stream of films that inspire immorality, godlessness, rebellion against moral authority, unrestrained violence, unrestrained lust, sex outside of marriage, divorce, unrestrained greed, etc.
But I guess this is all happening as per divine “permissive will.”
As such, following the Little Flower, I guess we should thank God even for these tragedies and crimes.
We should get one with seeking and touching the all-pure God in the little chapels of our souls.
Just to add a discursive footnote:
Humiliated and discredited after his 1950-53 accusations, Senator Eugene McCarthy (“McCarthyism”) also was subject to a minutely researched and different narrative (William F. Buckley, Jr. and L. Brent Bozell, “McCarthy and his Enemies: the Record and its Meaning,” Regnery, 1954/1961). Lots of attention to names, maneuverings and personal histories, to hearing transcripts, and to a few other key hearings curiously never conducted.
My summary recollection is that the new Senator McCarthy was seen as simply too green in his rhetoric, and that he miss-stepped by charging personalities as card-carrying communists, rather than more accurately as demonstrated serious security threats. Usually not full-blown Communists, but soft-headed “anti-anti-Communists.”
At one point (for one example) we learn that between 1948 and 1952, the period overlapping the McCarthy hearings (1950-1953), the State Department did in fact release 15 security risks, but it is not clear to the authors how many of these were among those named by McCarthy. A contrarian narrative, incisive and scholarly.
Back to Hollywood–As president of the screen actors guild, Ronald Reagan detected and resisted that domain of influence/infiltration (as a result, he switched political parties in 1962), and later as President of the United States was key to cutting the head off the snake–the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The corruption of Hollywood might claim that ironic benefit to civilization.
Well, it is not as if Pope Benedict, and all The Popes after Vatican lI did not recognize The Latin Mass is a Treasure.
Pray for the restoration of The Papacy as instituted by Christ.