BCT Editorial – 3/29/09

This page was last updated on October 25, 2009.

Sad passing; Editorial; Beaver County Times; March 29, 2009.

In the interest of disclosure, I attended first through eighth grades at St. Titus from 1958 to 1966. My brothers also attended with the last of us graduating in 1971. When I attended St. Titus, I recall there were two to three full classrooms per grade and total enrollment was somewhere in the 700s or 800s.

I wish I could take the editorial’s sentiment seriously, but I can’t. In addition to the challenges cited in the editorial, here are some others in no particular order.

In the case of St. Titus, Franklin Avenue stopped being the Franklin Avenue of the 1950s/1960s a very long time ago. When I attended St. Titus, Franklin Avenue was vibrant from the Stone Arch all the way down to the Wye at the J&L main entrance and parents didn’t have to worry about their kids in that area. For example, one time as an eighth grader I was entrusted with taking the money collected from the Friday sales of cafeteria tickets and bus passes down to the Mellon Bank office. If I recall correctly, that box had about $600 in it and no one thought twice that a kid would run into trouble making this trip.

Another reason likely is taxes. Remember, whether subsidized or not, parents had to come up with tuition for their children. This was on top of the school taxes they had to pay their school districts. As income used to pay taxes increases, the income available for tuition decreases. Considering the popularity of charter schools, I suspect enrollment at parochial schools would be much greater if vouchers could be used to pay for tuition. There are problems with this, of course, but you get the idea.

Finally, these schools had to address the same declining enrollment problems of the public schools, but didn’t have the taxpayer to bail them out.