Parents keep 'PACE' with cost of Catholic education

Amy Trumble in our Catholic Herald on a different approach to making the parish school more affordable.

Within one year of becoming the director of administrative services and development at St. Vincent Pallotti Parish, [Mike] Schaumann conceived and launched a tuition reduction plan known as the PACE Program. PACE is an acronym for Partners Advancing Catholic Education that involved reallocating some of the fund raising resources the school already had in place: Scrip, Market Day, We Care, and We Share.

In the past these fund raisers were used to support the parish and school. As a result of the PACE program, the profits are now being returned to 55 school families to be used toward tuition.

There was talk, when I was on the parish council at St. Al's, of charging the full cost of the school as tuition and reallocating the parish subsidy from each according to ability to pay to each according to need.

"This is the perfect example of thinking outside of the box," said William Kewan, 60, principal at St. Vincent Pallotti School.

The hard part isn't thinking outside the box, it's stepping outside the box.