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Looking for a tuition-free Catholic school?
Dec. 31 deadline looms for tax credit contributions
By Joyce Coronel, news@catholicsun.org
December 18, 2008
Complaining about having to pay taxes is something every Arizonan understands. Having the opportunity to tell the government exactly how to spend one’s hard-earned money is something much less understood.
The Catholic Tuition Organization of the Diocese of Phoenix, or CTODP for short, wants to change all that.
As the Dec. 31 deadline for contributions approaches, CTODP is trying hard to get the word out to taxpayers that they can help Catholic schools and parishes by simply redirecting their tax dollars. Best of all, it’s free.
Some people may question why they should contribute to the CTODP at all if they don’t have children in Catholic schools.
“You have to explain the ‘what’s-in-it-for-me factor’ to them,’” said Yvonne Bartlett, development director at Sacred Heart School in Prescott.
Parish-based schools can be a financial drain on parish budgets. When CTODP funding kicks in, money is freed up to support other parish needs.
Then there’s the angle beleaguered taxpayers enjoy: telling the government just how to spend those tax dollars. For many, directing their money toward Catholic institutions is a bit more palatable.
Prescott success
As parents of students at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Prescott have learned, CTODP funding makes an extraordinary difference. Every one of the school’s 157 students receives $3,800 from the CTODP to help pay the cost of tuition. Since tuition at the school is $4,500, that’s a sizeable chunk of help. No one at Sacred Heart pays more than $150 a month.
Bartlett said one reason the program is so successful in Prescott is the high level of participation by parishioners who share one trait: they don’t have children in the school.
Bartlett said these contributors — about 500 taxpayers who have designated Sacred Heart on their CTODP forms — are people who understand the children they are helping represent the future of the Church.
Sacred Heart has successfully promoted the message that contributing to the CTODP is a way of helping the broader community. They even advertise in The Courier, Prescott’s hometown newspaper.
“Once people realize that it works, then they talk to other people about it. So it’s really a hand-to-hand combat thing at the beginning,” Bartlett said, emphasizing the snowball effect the campaign has had.
Sacred Heart tries to maintain a high profile at the parish and has a table with information about the school and the benefits of the CTODP every month after Mass.
“The last quarter of the year we have posters and brochures and we talk to people in the mall after the Masses,” Bartlett said.
Overall, only about 25 percent of parents who have students at Sacred Heart contribute to the CTODP. That’s about the same rate of participation by parents of students at St. Mary-Basha School in Chandler, where Sr. Mary Norbert Long, SC, the school’s principal, would love to see results like Sacred Heart’s.
“The cost of education continues to go up. And as the cost increases, the burdens on families continue to rise. As a result, more and more people are considering not sending their children [to Catholic schools], reasoning that they can’t afford it,” Sr. Mary Norbert said.
The school has seen a drop in interest in enrollment and fewer children on its waiting list. Meanwhile, Sr. Mary Norbert said, there’s an extreme burden on the school’s operating budget as they try to bridge the gap between tuition — $3,950 per year — and what parents can pay.
“We have to come up with the difference,” Sr. Mary Norbert said.
Contributions to the CTODP are the key to easing that burden. If more Arizona taxpayers, and Catholics in particular, were to support the CTODP, more children would benefit from a Catholic education.
Paul Mulligan, the executive director of the CTODP, is hoping for more contributions this year, in spite of the downturn in the economy.
“Only 7 percent of registered Catholic households redirected their taxes to CTODP last year, and yet CTODP was still able to generate over $10 million in individual tax credit scholarships and provide significant tuition assistance to 50 percent of the students in diocesan Catholic schools,” Mulligan said.
“There’s no question that if from parish to parish, more Catholic taxpayers simply chose to redirect their tax dollars to CTODP, tuition could become free or otherwise reduced so much it would no longer be an obstacle to any family desiring a Catholic education,” Mulligan added.
Contributions to the CTODP can be made monthly, or as one payment prior to Dec. 31.
For many people, coming up with that kind of cash, isn’t easy. That’s why the CTODP and Tempe Schools Credit Union have teamed up to help with interest-free loans.
It takes about five minutes to set up an account at TSCU. Once contributors receive their tax refund, they simply repay the loan.
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