Online Applications Available For Catholic Elementary Schools

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This could be a game-changer.

That was the assessment of some elementary school principals when the archdiocesan superintendent of schools informed them that the application process for enrollment was going online and that increased financial assistance will be available for families applying to Catholic elementary schools in the archdiocese.

“We can be more efficient in terms of how we track and how we communicate with families if we take this online,” Dr. Timothy J. McNiff said last week in an interview with CNY in his office at the New York Catholic Center.

“We can get real-time data and then be able to be proactive accordingly,” he said.

Dr. McNiff has also announced that while families of lower income will continue to be served, special attention is being paid to help middle-class families send their children to Catholic schools. Dr. McNiff cited as an example a family of four could make $120,000 and still be eligible for a scholarship.

Another change is the streamlining and merging of the application process and scholarship programs. For the first time, there is no fee to apply for admission to a school, although there is a $35 processing fee for the scholarship and financial-assistance portion of the application.

To help families who do not have access to a computer at home, a dedicated laptop is available at the front office of every school for the application process, as are personnel to help navigate instructions. And a designated phone line is available to guide non-English-speaking families.

To retain the youngsters in Catholic schools for years to come, a heightened emphasis is being made to reach out to parents of universal pre-kindergarten and pre-K students.

“It is the beginning of an eight-year pipeline,” Dr. McNiff said. “That pipeline has to be strong at that point in time if it’s going to be healthy by the time we get to eighth grade.”

Dr. McNiff concedes that Catholic schools in the archdiocese experience what other schools do—“there’s an attrition factor over an eight-year period of time.”

“If you don’t have a strong pipeline at the beginning, that attrition is really going to exacerbate the enrollment. That’s why it’s critical to build it up at that point in time.”

Assisting Dr. McNiff in the endeavor is Photeine Anagnostopoulos, who began duties in December as the senior advisor to the superintendent of schools for enrollment.

“The Catholic identity is always front and center,” Ms. Anagnostopoulos said of Catholic schools in the archdiocese. Nearly 75 percent of the applicants are Catholic, she added. At the same time, “the values of a Catholic education are attractive to everybody, non-Catholic and Catholic alike,” she said. “The character building, the spiritual development, are important, and I think parents have realized that. We truly believe in the multifaith opportunities here, but there’s no question it’s Catholic. We make that clear right upfront.”

Ms. Anagnostopoulos added, “It’s an affordable, academically rigorous program that actually develops your kids overall in the Catholic spirit. I just think we can get more Catholic families. We have a lot of families at CCD, we have a lot of families who do go to church, but they need to start looking at the schools.

“This is an easy way to do it. Come and take a look.”

The free, online application may be found at www.CatholicSchoolsNY.org or by calling (646) 794-2885 for assistance. Directors of enrollment, regionally based, follow up with more in-depth information for families.

Once applications are received, families are invited to their school of choice for an in-person interview. They will learn of their child’s acceptance and about any scholarship or tuition assistance they will be receiving after the interview has taken place and all supplementary documents have been submitted.

New students entering kindergarten through the eighth grade completing both the admissions application and the financial assistance/scholarship application by March 9 will receive decisions regarding acceptance and financial assistance/scholarship no later than April 22. Applications will remain open after the March 9 early decision deadline.

Scholarships and financial assistance for the 2016-2017 school year will be awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Last year, more than 8,100 scholarship and tuition-assistance awards averaging $2,100 were distributed across the archdiocese. This year, the archdiocese expects to increase the awards substantially, with an expected total of about 10,000 awards, based on demand and applications that meet the established criteria.

“In no way are we abandoning our mission to serve poor families and families of lower income,” Dr. McNiff said. “But we have not done a good job of servicing families of middle income, and understanding they need financial support, particularly when they have multiple children in the school.

“Our scholarship effort this year is to stay true to lower income but broaden that resource so that Catholic middle income families feel like they can also have this opportunity.”

“The beauty of all this is, because we did take it online,” Ms. Anagnostopoulos said, “we’ll be able to see if we’ve actually done that—we’ll be able to understand if we’ve been able to attract more Catholic, middle-income families, what their needs are, what the needs are of the entire population.

“It’s the beginning of a longer term plan that will allow, hopefully, the enrollment to build.”

Dr. McNiff said, “This process is going to definitively tell us how big is the financial challenge this system has in having families afford the tuition.

“We’re going to have the data to be able to identify that and not just guess at it or base it on anecdotal information. With that hard, accurate, data, it’s going to be able to tell us how we should plan going forward.”