Catholic Schools Also Big Winners in Tuition Grants

The 3,750 Los Angeles youngsters picked to receive private school tuition grants for the coming academic year aren’t the only winners of a random drawing conducted by the Children’s Scholarship Fund.

Schools operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles are the other major beneficiary of the $16-million, privately financed scholarship program.

Nearly half of all Los Angeles scholarship winners have signed up to attend Catholic schools, administrators of the fund said.

Friday was the deadline for the 40,000 nationwide winners of the four-year scholarships to choose the school they want to attend.

Local fund administrators swamped by a last-minute flurry of campus-choice notifications said they will not have a complete accounting of where the scholarship money will be sent for several days.

But the latest tally indicated that 46% of Los Angeles scholarship winners have picked Catholic schools. Officials said recipients will attend 113 Catholic campuses.

The Los Angeles archdiocese already runs one of the largest private school systems in the country, with about 100,000 students in 280 elementary and high schools. Tuition payments averaging $1,205 a year are being issued to Los Angeles winners for the next four years. Parents are responsible for the remaining tuition costs. Private school tuition averages $2,538 a year.

Designed to offer private schooling for poor children, the independently financed program was launched in mid-1998 by wealthy New York venture capitalist Theodore J. Forstmann and Wal-Mart heir John Walton.

The pair pledged $100 million of their own money and recruited donors to match $5 million designated for scholarships in New York and Chicago and $8 million earmarked for Los Angeles.

Here, donors included entertainment executive Michael Ovitz, developer Eli Broad and supermarket magnate Ronald W. Burkle.

The fund is the largest private aid education effort in the country targeting children from kindergarten through eighth grade. It is viewed by some as a major test of the controversial voucher approach to education: providing money to parents and pupils to spend on schools of their choice.

Critics complain that the voucher system siphons the best students from public school classrooms and robs struggling public campuses of financing that is determined by attendance.

But Forstmann has said that “competition can save American education” by giving an “equal opportunity” to poor families and shaking up what he described as the “creaking monopoly” of public schools.

Nationwide, 1.25 million students applied for the 40,000 scholarships. In Los Angeles, there were 54,444 applicants for the 3,750 stipends, according to Julia MacInnes, executive director of the fund’s Los Angeles office.

MacInnes said her office sent local winners a list of 700 private schools to consider. As of Friday, there were 299 participating campuses, she said.

Along with the Catholic schools, they include 17 Baptist, 17 Lutheran, 20 other schools listed as Protestant or Christian, 15 Jewish, six Afro-Centric, five Seventh-day Adventists, three Islamic and one college prep school. Ninety-five others were categorized as “other.”

Winners’ parents have been scurrying to enroll their children in the school of their choice since April 22, when a computer randomly selected the recipients. Some parents discovered that their first choice was full--or that there was no additional financial aid available to supplement the Children’s Scholarship Fund grant.

“It is like winning the lottery. I’m very delighted,” parent Joanne Russell said of her happiness at daughter Kandyce Jackson-Russell’s selection.

The sixth-grader was struggling at a Los Angeles Unified School District campus but will now attend the Cecil L. Murray Education Center, operated at the First AME Church in the West Adams district. There, class size is about half that of public school.

The scholarship will cover about 40% of Kandyce’s $3,250 yearly tuition, said Russell, an after-school program administrator.

Darlene Bryson said the fund will finance about 75% of her daughter Kiara Watley’s $3,000 tuition at the Ebony Learning Tree in South West Los Angeles.

Bryson selected that campus for her 5-year-old after observing kindergartners there being taught to read and write.

“When she’s older, I’ll explain to her how lucky she was to be accepted and the benefit she has over other kids,” said Bryson, a bank worker who lives in South-Central Los Angeles.

“I’m willing to invest in her education. I want my baby to be one of the smart ones.”