As household budgets become tighter and tighter, many families are left unable to afford a Catholic education for their children.
Thankfully, the Catholic Community Foundation has a number of funds established with the intended purpose of overcoming this obstacle. St. John Parish in Westminster provides an example of the good such funds achieve.
Founded more than 150 years ago, the St. John parish school, St. John Catholic School has an enrollment of more than 280 in grades pre-K through eight. The school’s Finance Director, Gabbie Peregoy, a lifelong St. John’s parishioner and graduate of the school, mentioned two endowment funds that have provided significant help to parishioners, The Marilyn H. Reinhardt Endowment Fund and The Nellie Agnes Arnold Scholarship Endowment Fund.
Of these two funds, Stephanie Rattell, Interim Principal for St. John School, said, “These funds are helping some of our families who are very devout Catholics, who are big supporters of Catholic education, and who really want their children to have a Catholic education.” She related the story of one family whose father had Parkinson’s disease, but who continued to work full time, as did his wife. Mrs. Rattell emphasized, “They were very committed to supporting the school and spent a good deal of time volunteering. But they were struggling to make ends meet.” She also mentioned another family whose father had his hours at work cut substantially and income diminished significantly. In both cases, these families were able to keep their children enrolled at St. John School thanks to tuition assistance from the two endowments.
Thus far, the Reinhardt and Arnold scholarship funds have assisted more than 20 families. Mrs. Peregoy, said, “We have families who have called and said, ‘We have to withdraw.’ And when we tell them that these endowments can help, they are very grateful. It makes a big difference because they really want their children to have a Catholic education. Ultimately, endowments like these enable us to attract students to our school who ordinarily wouldn’t be able to attend. We’re able to get them into our school and to keep them here.”
