Ten Assumptions about Catholic Schools to Re-Think, Post-Covid, part I

We closed over 200 Catholic schools since the beginning of the pandemic. No doubt Covid played a large role,  the proverbial “nail in the coffin.” But as has been noted elsewhere,  for many of our schools, Covid was the accelerant to closing, but not the primary cause. Most were fragile long prior to Covid for reasons that are familiar to all of us. We’ve been watching this for 50 years--Covid merely sped up the time table. 

For the schools that remain, post-Covid, there will be a huge temptation to breathe a sigh of relief and then default back to how we operated pre-Covid. In fact, our parents, students and teachers will want that initially—to return to the familiar, thank God! But the issues that led to a 50-year decline are still with us, and if we merely return to our past without re-thinking our assumptions, we risk becoming another casualty further down the road. 

So what are those assumptions? As principal of three Catholic high schools, president of a K-12 school and a consultant for schools in several dioceses, I find these assumptions to be remarkably consistent, with rare exceptions.  Let me list ten of them, with a brief explanation why I believe it would profit us to rethink them. 

Assumption #1: A “diocesan school,” as part of the same “system," should require the same curriculum, yearly calendar, teacher credentials, professional development, etc. 

But this kind of “template” thinking hurts our most vulnerable schools. If the struggling mid-town or urban school is trying to replicate what the more established, wealthier school in the suburbs is doing, most parents will drive the extra 15, 20 or 30 minutes to take their kids to the wealthier school, which has more resources, and can do the “diocesan program” more effectively.  Let’s give our urban and mid-town schools a fighting chance, by allowing them to be unique: How about a Montessori diocesan school? A dual language school? A classical school? Year-round? 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for working families? 

Assumption #2:  Our tuitions must remain low for the sake of our most vulnerable families. 

The problem is, in a free-market economy, consumers equate price with quality. By positioning ourselves as the “K-Mart” of educational options, we undercut our reputation.  Would we feel more secure with our choice of a heart surgeon if hours before surgery we found out his rates were just 25%  of what the area heart surgeons typically charged?  Wouldn't we worry about what’s wrong with him, that he can’t charge what his peers charge? So I believe we should aim our tuitions at the middle of the market, and increase financial aid aggressively to protect our more vulnerable families. We can use the extra money, collected from families who can afford full freight, to help families who cannot, and then offer something of value (“a scholarship”) that entices families to join us. 

Assumption #3: We don’t have enough money to be truly generous with financial aid. 

If we have empty seats in our school, a generous financial aid program gives us revenue we otherwise wouldn’t have. The reason is simple: Better to get 1/3, 1/2 or 3/4 of tuition for an empty seat than to have the seat remain empty the whole year. In other words, a generous financial aid program gets us more tuition. I think most of us understand this but we’re reluctant to embrace this whole hog. It’s the same reason that airlines and hotels discount tickets for certain flights or certain days of the week. 

I recommend a robust financial aid program tied to an objective assessment of need. Companies like FACTS can assess need for us.  We use a small group called “Covenant Tuition Services” that asks families to answer a series of financial questions and to attach a copy of their most recent 1040 tax form. The company sends us their estimate of need, we decide how much to give them (usually not the whole amount they qualify for), then send the family a congratulatory letter telling them how much we are giving them. And if it’s not enough, I tell them to write us back and ask for more, with a simple explanation as to their additional need. 

Assumption #4: We can’t afford to offer our teachers salaries that match market rates.

We are fond of saying our Catholic school teachers “work for mission, not money."  That’s undoubtedly true, but underpaying teachers is not a long term strategy for excellence. Our teachers are heads of households, and if the competition is paying 10K more each year, there are bills to pay and mouths to feed. I have several suggestions for improving our teachers’ bottom line that don’t break our school budgets, including joint housing agreements, merit raises and signing bonuses- all explained here. But we should also consider  “banding” our salary scales: for each number on our scale, consider +/- 2,500, for example, which would allow us to pay some teachers a bit more and others a bit less, depending on their value to the school and what the market demands. And we should also look at our pay scales from a macro-perspective: Many of our schools have a very narrow salary range between beginning teachers and 20 year+ teachers. We’d do better if we widened that range, paying beginning teachers (typically young college graduates) less, and veteran teachers more, which would allow for larger “step increases” over the course of their careers. I have shown here, that in a typical Catholic school, the wider range of pay scales often costs a school less. Some schools have done away with pay scales all together, as was the case in my previous school.

Assumption #5:  Our principals should receive a modest salary. 

Let me make an over-generalization: Particularly in our elementary schools, our principals are paid 20K, 30K or 40K less than they should be. We need to rethink that. The principal is the single greatest variable for the effectiveness, growth and reputation of the school—an ineffective principal could cause 5-10 families to leave in a given year, and a good principal could cause 5-10 new families to join up—a delta of 10-20 total students in one year (which would be roughly 40K to 80K total tuition if tuition were 4K). We act as if 30K is a king’s ransom, but by withholding it, we narrow the pool of principal candidates to the local market, often forcing us to elevate a teacher to the principalship, as we are unable to entice candidates from outside the region to reasonably consider moving in for the job. My rule of thumb would be what ever the average teacher salary of the school (let’s call that “X”), the principal should make a minimum of “2X.” See my more detailed argument for this here.     

We will look at the next five assumptions next week in Part II.