How much is too much

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heathernoel

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How much is too much to pay for Catholic education? Hubby had a huge slow down in work (thanks to fuel prices) and although he is recovering, it may be too late. My entire paycheck as a teacher goes to either Catholic school or the Catholic early learning center because I want the kids to have that background. I never had it. I want them to have that. But, it’s too much. I just don’t know what to do.

This school is quite costly, at $900/month for the two girls for school, and $180/week for a toddler. SOon, we’ll be adding an infant to that, making our weekly fee over $300.

How do Catholics afford big families?! I am trying to do what I can, but we are just so depressed over this.

Thanks for listening.
 
:eek: We pay about $225.00 a month for our child to attend Catholic school. I suppose it depends on demographics and what the school has for facilities and programs. Our facilities are really old and there is not much more than required academics and the normal sports programs. Are there other options for Catholic education where you live ? Have a great day.
 
We have 3 in Catholic school - 2 in high school and 1 in junior high. Our monthly tuition bill this year is $2850. We got our tuition contract for next year …it is going to be $3000 a month beginning in June.

But, our alternative is a public school with 1000 kids per grade level, no chance of participating in team sports (unless it is intramural), no chance of being in the drama club, no chance of a lot of things offered by this smaller school (220 kids per grade level).
 
Catholic90 said:
We have 3 in Catholic school - 2 in high school and 1 in junior high. Our monthly tuition bill this year is $2850. We got our tuition contract for next year …it is going to be $3000 a month beginning in June.
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God bless you! I don’t know how you do it!
 
We’re hoping our son will start Kindergarten at our Parish school this fall… tuition is ~$560/month…

I’d love to find a less-stressful job (which would mean a cut in pay), but I guess that won’t be happening any time soon… 🤷
Tough sacrifices for our kids… but worth it, as long as I can emotionally handle the stress!
 
For our family, I would move to a place with good public schools (yes, there are many of them in this nation, we picked where we live based on the great public schools) or homeschool.
 
Wow! I heard that Catholic schools were expensive but I had no idea they were THAT expensive! Oh, how we need more nuns to educate our children again so more families can send their children to Catcholic schools!

If we cannot find a good, orthodox and affordable Catholic school (do such schools run by nuns even exist anymore in this country), then I am homeschooling.
 
I’m going to be a long term sub for a teacher going on maternity leave. Tuition where I’ll be teaching is $3450/ yr for 1/2 day K, $5700 for full day K, and $7200/ yr for grades 1 - 8. They do give multi child discounts for the 3rd and 4th child. 5th child (or more) is free.

—KCT
 
We homeschool. My wife and her siblings went to Catholic school, and now one is an anti-Catholic Bible Christian (sounds like an oxymoron to me), and her other sibling is Moslem! You can learn the same bad things from the other kids there that you can in public school, but you have less kids whose parents don’t care–if they pay that much for school, they probably care. Going to Catholic school doesn’t guarantee a good education on the faith, nor sheltering from the bad things they learn from other kids.

Studying on our own, we learned far more than we ever got from Catholic high school, or even the private Catholic College we both attended! Even if most of your religious education is from this website, that is better than what you get from Catholic school.

If you keep them home, you get to meet ALL their friends, select which groups they can hang out with, etc. Your best source of Catholic education for them is YOU. Join things like Bible studies and prayer groups, and try to put your family in the middle of all the Church community events. Then your kids can see what it’s like to live the faith and feel the love and support of a faith community.

As far as cost goes, you could find some kind of work-from-home thing you could do, start an E-bay business, etc. If most of your pay was going toward their education, you will have removed that cost and any kind of pay you can get will feel like extra. If one of you is not driving to and from work, maybe you can get by on one vehicle, cutting out car payments and insurance. If you need two cars, you still cut gas and other work-related costs.
 
I will be completing my Mater’s in Education shortly after I get married. The FH and I both would rather not send our kids to public school, but we have also discussed the fact the if we are blessed with a large family, it may make more sense to homeschool.

If this is the case, I plan to keep my state certification. That way I can tutor students (we’ll probably advertise my services in a couple parish bulletins) at night. I looked on our local craigslist and local tutors go for $25s an hour, I would probably charge my services at $20 per hour to remain competitive. Also, being state certified, if there was someone interested I could take-in another child or two to homeschool from another family at say, $250 a month. Or even advertise on Craigslist and elsewhere as a consultant to other homeschooling families who would like some advice/direction on developing a program for their children.

As a state certified teacher, I thinks there is lots of ways you can homeschool AND bring in an income.:yup:
 
The irony to this all is that I am a teacher…I teach kids with autism in public school. I feel it’s a calling, so this is just tough. I think about what that extra money would mean to my children, and then I am back to square 1.

Thanks for all the (name removed by moderator)ut. I would LOVE to have nuns teaching my children instead.

I’d
 
Both of my parents worked in public education (Dad was a School Psychologist and Mom was a first grade teacher) for 35+ years.

My father passed away about 8 years ago so I’m not sure what he would say but my mother now lives near us and takes care of my 2 oldest when they get out of preschool. (3 & 5).

In regards to the original post I believe it depends on where you live and for us, wheither you are a member of the parish or not.

Our schooling, oldest will be in Kindergarten next year, that is $255 per month for parish memebers, like $320 for Catholic non members and $400 for others. Compared to other areas of the country that is down right cheap. It’s cheaper for parish memebers because everyone agrees to works a certian amount of time doing something for the school in order to keep costs down. We also have a large fair / fund raiser once a year that really brings the town together (about 70K people live here).

I’m pretty sure there is also a discount the more kids you have but I understand completely, I don’t know how some families do it because we are one of the lowest paid states in the nation.

Eventually we will have at least 3, all we have right now, in at the same time which I’m sure by then will be close to a $1000 per month plus books etc… that, when trying to also save for college, isn’t easy.

However the school is fantastic, the teachers are fantasic etc… even my Retired public school teaching Baptist mom (still working on her) wants them to go there. While our public schools are also some of the best in our state, I just can’t see “wanting” to do anything else for them. The boys love their school, and that to me makes all the difference in the world.

Joe
 
To the OP-

In our area, we pay $360 a month for tuition for two girls, grades 1 & 3. We also pay $7 an hour for extended care. It can cost up to $450 for 2 children on a parishioner rate, and up to $16 an hour for extended care.

My parents did it. They made a lot of sacrifices. Percentage-wise, it was indeed cheaper for them at the time.However, most of the faculty at our school consisted of religious. Just as you expect and deserve a living wage, so do Catholic school teachers. That jacks up the price.

At several points with our older two, partially from finances and partially because the world of special ed. did not exist the way it does now back then, we home schooled. With my two younger ones, I am over 50 and have found better schools with more opportunities. So, for right now, we will send them to Catholic school and enhance their learning opportunities through music lessons, Girl Scouts, etc.
 
In Maryland:

I did a check on the schools I attended growing up. Both have excellent reputations, and I could not have been more pleased with the educations, both religiously and academically. There are very expensive now, it would seem.

There are obvious varying degrees of cost and other schools; I chose my old stomping ground for kicks.

**Trinity School ** - run by the Sisters of Notre Dame De Namur, coed

Yearly tuition - $ 10,310, or $859.17/month

Mt. St. Joseph High School - run by the Xaverian Brothers, all young men

Yearly tuition - $10,000, or $833.33/month

So for comparison, each child would cost a family with 3 children would spend approximately $398,370 over the life of their children up through starting college. This assumes of course no price hikes, which is unrealistic.

I plan on doing it, but come college, they are on there own!
 
Man, I am :eek: at how much many of you pay for tuition. I knew we were blessed to have our children in the Catholic school they attend, but after reading some of these posts…I am ever so grateful for the blessings in my life!

We choose to pay tuition upfront, and it costs $6000/year for 2 kids. I get a 7% sibling discount for 2 kids, and will get a 14% discount when my son starts Kindergarten. We also get a $100 discount per kid for paying up front.👍
 
Well, how much IS too much?

I would think that the way to determine this is looking at the base (public school) and determining if what you are paying in tuition is worth that much more than a public school education in your area.

To determine that, you have to put a value on a few things. But it’s hard for me to come up with a list of attributes and their associated values, because everyone’s list of attributes is different, and people place a different value on each attribute. It’s entirely subjective.

So, the bottom line is that too much is in the eye of the beholder.

So, I’d be interested to know how people determine what the benefit of Catholic school is and how you put a price tag on it, to determine if you are paying “too much”.
 
mschrank said:
He’s friggin’ loaded. 🤷
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That is quite a snide comment coming from someone who knows nothing of my situation.:mad:

First of all, I am a SHE.

Second of all, we are by no means “loaded”.

My DH works full time at a business of which he is part owner. Some years are good, some are not. We save when it is good. We can dip into that when it is bad.

If you have read some of my other posts, then you know I work 2 part time jobs that add up to more than a full time job just to pay tuition. I work, on average, 50-55 hours per week. Plus I am the primary chauffeur for my kids, and I rarely, if ever, have missed an extracurricular activity of theirs. I get, on average, 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Why do we do it? Because we so believe in the value of a Catholic education and the value of smaller school and class sizes, none of which they would be getting at our public high school.

So how DARE YOU say we are “loaded”? That was a very unkind, uncharitable comment.:mad:

Edited to add:

We drive cars that are older - one has 200,000 miles and our “new” van has 50,000. We shop at Walmart and Target. We do not take vacations. In other words, we SACRIFICE to make this work.

So, I guess to be called “loaded” really rubs me the wrong way, on a day where I have already put in 8 hours of work today at school, and I am looking at another 6 hours of editing tonight, plus editing all day Sunday afternoon.
 
**Please look into options for tuition assistance … **

**Do you support your parish? Does the parish provide school support … my parish provides about 18% of the school costs from the Sunday collection… this helps keep tuition costs down … and our school families are expected to support the Sunday collections at a certain level … it is a ‘parish’ school 🙂 School families support parish, parishioners support school … **

**Does the diocese you are in offer tuition assitance? Catholics in the diocese fill out forms [based upon tax returns] to recieve diocesan tuition support… 🙂 **

**Parish School Fund raising … our school has a variety of fundraising actvities that provide scholarships, tuition assistance and direct school suppport to keep costs down … Script sales, Annual Auction [Oral & Silent], Raffle and Endowment Dinners, Jog-a-thon, Wreath/Poinsetta sales, etc] School families are required to volunteer a certain amount of hours each year for fund raising … 😃 **

**Knights of Columbus … perhaps you local council could help with tuition assistance … or they might offer a fundraising activity for tuition [our council provides scholarships for catholic high school tuition not our local parish school - but you never know] … 🙂 **

Also, there may be other organizations, both catholic and non-catholic, that may offer tuition assiatance …

**Good luck in your search 👍 **
 
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