Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
St. Agnes Catholic School in Louisville holds the distinction of being a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon School four times. Only a handful of schools across the entire nation have achieved this prestigious honor of education excellence.
As members of St. Agnes Church, my wife and I know our financial support for this school is part of our mission to share our faith with the new generation. Along with a well-rounded, rigorous program in arts and sciences, the school teaches the foundations of our faith and our identity as followers of Christ to serve the world, especially the poor, with our talents and treasures.
This financial support is not new for us. Our great grandparents and grandparents did the same, as did our parents. We now witness grandchildren benefiting from this same spirit of generosity spurred by our faith.
None of our extended family looked to the government to subsidize what we believe to be a core value of our lives.
For those not able to afford Catholic tuition, organizations like the remarkable Catholic Educational Foundation in the Archdiocese of Louisville and Community Catholic Center in West Louisville and the Portland neighborhoods work to make tuition affordable for many moderate income and poor families.
However, Catholic schools are not designed to accommodate all children the way public schools must do by law. Children with severe mental, physical and learning challenges or with language differences (children in Jefferson County Public Schools speak 139 languages), those on the margins are shut out of Catholic schools.
My Catholic faith teaches that each one of these children is just as sacred, just as valuable, as any other child. Their unique educational needs must be addressed by specialists in a thriving public education system.
Yet our public school systems, where more than 90% of Kentucky children attend, are under attack in Frankfort. They remain drastically underfunded, with teacher pay far below what it needs to be to attract and retain the brightest and most gifted teachers. Student test scores and dropout rates continue to shame us all. Wrap around services for students with special learning and emotional needs remain inadequate, resulting in thousands entering the work force without basic skills to navigate daily living. In frustration, many turn to violence, drugs, alcohol and criminal behavior in adulthood in desperate attempts to master their demons.
Despite these harsh realities, Frankfort Republican leaders are not just ignoring what is occurring, they promise to compound the problems by pushing Amendment 2, which sets the legal stage to give middle- and upper-class Kentuckians vouchers to finance private schools, including all Catholic schools. If passed, this constitutional amendment will permit the misguided Republican legislators to suck hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s coffers to subsidize private schools that serve a select group of students.
To compound the problem, Kentucky’s misguided Catholic bishops are promoting Amendment 2 with the fallacious reasoning it will offer “choice” to poor children whose parents want to escape a failing public school system and flee to a Catholic school.
The hole left in the state’s budget — which has been structurally imbalanced for over 20 years — will drain even more money from critical state programs including public schools; child protective and day-care services; after-school, health and mental health programs, as well as Youth Services Centers.
As Catholics we are taught every public policy decision must be first filtered through a lens of “How will this affect the poorest among us?” The answer for Amendment 2 is: it hurts the poor.
Sometimes Catholics are led by our bishops, sometimes our bishops must be led by the people in the pews. Our bishops, perhaps unaware of the serious fiscal crises facing our public school systems, now need to be instructed.
It is time they promote full state funding for all valuable public services in our poor, undereducated, unhealthy, environmentally threatened commonwealth. It is not the time for them to siphon money from our state treasury to pay for Catholic schools or any private school.
Our Catholic schools can be financed by prosperous Catholics whose lives have been shaped by their faith experiences in Catholic schools. The state should not pay for any school that promotes any religious creed. Period.
It is time for all Catholics to follow our church’s teachings on protecting the poor and promoting the common good.
Jim Wayne served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1991-2019. He is co-founder of Community Catholic Center in Louisville which has provided support for children in West Louisville and Portland neighborhoods. He can be reached at jimwayne@twc.com.
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
