Another NOLA area Catholic elementary going out of business

Did you really just link a 20 year old article?

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I don't know much about the economics and public schools in Norco. I know St. Charles generally has decent public schools but has had them for many years, so nothing new here.

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It's happening all over the New Orleans area wherein formally viable Catholic schools have stated to merge or shutdown. It's a combination of demogaphics and economics. The African Americans overall, are not Catholic and they don't have the money to pay the nut for a Catholic school education....in the white areas where it is happening, it's cost pure and simple. Catholic schools have started to price themselves out of the middle/working class market. They need to be competitive in pay with the public schools.

The other factor is what the diocese does with the money the parents are paying for tuition. In my personal experience the tuition I paid didn't stay in the school. It was 'given' to schools in poorer areas at the detriment to school that raised the money.

Then the school had the balls to keep asking us to donate more money so it could run.

My view was, for of the amount of money I'm paying you better be heads above the public schools. In my experience they were below and were a total failure at college prep.

This was high school.

Religion seems to be dying off with the younger generation.

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n my personal experience the tuition I paid didn't stay in the school. It was 'given' to schools in poorer areas at the detriment to school that raised the money.

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Hmm, must have been something quirky with that one school as I know that's not the norm.
I've always been friends with people on our school board and every penny is accounted for and spent on the school expenses. Now if the church or the parents club are sending money to other areas, that's a different story.

As was noted in the thread last week and hit on by Golfer, the public schools in Nola and Jefferson Parish are doing better in general, especially the magnet schools and newer charter schools.

Hell, even the people I know in the Lakeview/Lake Vista area are sending their kids to the good public school in the neighborhood now instead of Catholic.

Sacred Heart's enrollment has been low for at least 10 years. When my kids went there in PreK-6th grade you could see a decline each year. A key factor in finally closing it is St. Charles Borromeo in Destrehan has had some dip in enrollment and has the space to pick up those at SH that want to stay in Catholic school. Talk of this happening has been going on for a good while.

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Not really. Catholic School costs have remained quite flat when it comes to inflation adjusted tuition.

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Most of the catholic elementary schools, where I know people that attend, it seems like the tuition costs goes up, average, about $100 a year. So that's generally in the 2-4% range.

Most of them are now touching $5,000 a year, or close to it.

But there are a lot of hidden costs as well. The two years my kids attended Catholic school, the uniforms were more expensive. There was constantly a fee for this or money for that. I was writing probably 10 checks a month to the school for various things. $10 here, $15 there. It adds up. Lunch is more expensive, etc.

In inflation-adjusted dollars, it's probably only slightly more expansive then years ago. But I think people assign less a value to it than they once did. Some of that is demographics, religion, and improvements in public education especially in advance academies and magnets.