Archdiocesan grants and scholarships
With the economy in the current state of instability and disarray, many of our families are experiencing serious financial constraints due to the loss of income or loss of job or increased expenses in health care insurance premiums; nearly all families are experiencing a decrease or depletion of investment income. Some families have called our schools requesting emergency assistance because they have lost their homes due to mortgage foreclosures, and must reestablish their lives in the rental housing market. These families are struggling to make the important and correct choices given their current situation, and must contend with weighing the increasing cost of Catholic school education with flat or decreasing income streams. In these times, it is important to pool our resources and help those who are most in need.
The economy doesn't spare the Archdiocese when it comes to investments and investment income. Despite conservative models of investing, the Today's Students Tomorrow's Leaders and other Endowments have "dipped below principal." (See related article in Catholic San Francisco, Jan. 23, 2009.) On Feb. 6, 2009, the Finance Council recommended a special policy to spend a portion of the upcoming year earnings from the endowments. This translates into good news for our schools, as the Archdiocese is expected to be able to fund an increased amount in Tuition Assistance for Family Grants and Scholarships.
We are budgeting an additional amount to be spent from the principal of the Catholic High School Scholarship Fund. As this restricted fund is not an endowment, funds can be spent for the purposes of high school scholarships. This year, we will draw down approximately 25% of that fund from the principal. Our future ability to offer tuition assistance through fund and endowment spending is dependent upon the market recovery.
For school year 2009-10, due to the decisions detailed above, and with funds available from other financial aid funds, we estimate that we will be able to award just slightly more than $750,000 in tuition assistance to our families on an as-needed basis. While the families will certainly be grateful for this relief, this is still a long way from the $1M that we award in the current school year, but is much better news than $150,000 in tuition assistance that we thought we were limited to at the end of January. Individual schools also have their own scholarships and endowments that are able to contribute to financial aid to families in need of tuition assistance. We continue to look at the resources in the Archdiocese to help our families, and must balance the needs of the many in the parishes and the schools.
April 15 is the deadline for submitting all information to the third party need evaluation company that we use to collect the financial data from our families. The high school applications were due to the respective schools in January and are currently in process. Late applications will NOT be considered. Students must live in San Mateo, San Francisco or Marin Counties. We expect to announce the awards to students' families at the end of May. This is consistent with the process we used to award tuition assistance for this year.
We wish to thank you, the constituents of the Archdiocese of San Francisco for your continued generosity to our schools. It is because of you that generations of students and their families have and will receive a Catholic school education. If you wish to find out more about the funds mentioned above, or wish to inquire about a specific fund, or would like to make a donation to any of our scholarship funds or endowments, please don't hesitate to give me a call.
By Annette Brown
Annette Brown is Assistant Superintendent for Planning and Finance at the Archdiocese of San Francisco Catholic Schools Dept. Contact her at 415-614-5662, browna@sfarchdiocese.org.
