Mahony Forms Plans to Meet Rising Costs of Catholic Schools

In a major effort to meet the rising costs of Catholic schools, Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony says he will have all parochial schools develop their own endowment funds and will develop archdiocesan foundations worth $100 million to aid urban schools.

“Our commitment is to make Catholic schools within the archdiocese as affordable as possible and to look for creative ways to ensure their accessibility for all economic levels,” Mahony said in a 3,000-word pastoral letter on Catholic schools issued this week.

The archdiocese’s 230 elementary schools have a 66% minority enrollment, and its 30 high schools are 53% minority students.

107,000 Students

The Los Angeles archdiocese, encompassing Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, has more than 107,000 students, which has been the average enrollment for the last seven years, officials said.

Mahony’s pastoral letter dealt broadly with Catholic education issues. In talking with reporters in Anaheim at the National Catholic Education Assn. convention, which ended Thursday, he elaborated a bit on his plans for endowments and foundations.

He said the archdiocese has always enjoyed a “generous relationship” between wealthy and poor parishes but that the aid was generally limited to church operations.

The archbishop said he plans to have substantial new funds channeled to inner-city schools from projected archdiocesan foundations. “We’re talking about a couple of foundations of $50 million each,” he said.

Additionally, “each and every school will have its own endowment fund” for scholarships and other needs, Mahony said. Some money will be designated as continuing education scholarships for school administrators and staff, he said.

‘Not Been Terribly Creative’

“I think we have not been terribly creative in enlisting alumni support as well as help from the corporate world,” said Mahony, who succeeded Cardinal Timothy Manning as archbishop last September.

Alumni objections to the sale and planned closing of Cathedral High School in Los Angeles’ Chinatown were turned around last year by Mahony into alumni financial support once the new archbishop arranged to retain the property. “With professional help, they are making scholarships available,” Mahony said.

Current tuition costs, Los Angeles Catholic school officials said, are $850 per year for an elementary school pupil, with reductions for second and third students from the same family, and an average of $1,200 per year for a high school student.

“We anticipate that tuition will rise about 10% next year to cover increases in salaries,” said Msgr. John Mihan, archdiocesan superintendent of elementary schools. The high school tuition is expected to go to an average of $1,300 next school year.

Mahony said some schools already have their own financial development programs, but “I want to recommend that each school do it and that all have the same organizational structure, all functioning according to the same standards. We want to help them earn more return by pooling their (financial) resources.”

Overhauling Financial System

The archbishop’s plans for reorganizing school finances are only part of the overhauling of the archdiocese’s system of handling money matters--until seven months ago a one-man operation. With the death last September of Msgr. Benjamin Hawkes, the treasurer, Mahony gave top priority to the formation of a finance council and the naming of a lay finance officer, Jose A. Debasa. A full-time development officer will start work in September.

In his pastoral letter, Mahony indicated briefly that his administration will neither reject future government aid to Catholic schools nor rely on the possibility. He backed proposals, which have not been approved by Congress, to give parents tax credits for tuition to private schools.

“While we endorse this right to government assistance through a constitutionally acceptable means, we do not envision it as an adequate solution to our financial challenges,” Mahony said.

Coincidentally, Msgr. Thomas Curry, the vicar for priests in the Los Angeles archdiocese, cautioned in a national Catholic magazine this week that Catholics should not hope that new appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Reagan, if vacancies occur before 1988, will necessarily tip the balance toward federal aid to church-run schools.

The slim minority of four justices who favor such assistance do so because they believe that religion is not necessarily pervasive in the Catholic schools, Curry said in America magazine. “This presupposition differs drastically from the bishops’ vision of religion as the integrating factor in education,” wrote Curry, whose book on historical church-state conflicts, “First Freedoms” (Oxford), was recently published.

Mahony said he has discussed Curry’s views with him and feels that aid in particular cases may involve no conflict, as in the case of classes in mathematics or the use of buses and other facilities.

‘Different From Other Schools’

The archbishop’s pastoral letter in fact emphasized that “as faith communities, our Catholic schools are different from other schools . . . a bonding that provides a drawing force to the church through all stages of life.”

Mahony said the schools retain an emphasis on teaching the faith and “on integrating Gospel values into all subject areas of the curriculum” while equipping students in other areas as well. He said 86% of Catholic high school graduates went on to more schooling last year.

He said moral education in human sexuality “is all the more imperative” in Catholic schools in view of proposals within the Los Angeles city school system to dispense birth control information and devices--efforts that proponents say are needed to reduce the frequency of teen-age pregnancies.

For Catholic schools, Mahony said, “Education in authentically Christian and Catholic family life and values must have clear priority over the simple imparting of knowledge.”