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Therese, seated, and Lenny Schaefer, standing, sell Scrip to St. Vincent Pallotti parishioners following a recent Sunday morning Mass. Parents are able to reduce the cost of Catholic education through the parish’s PACE (Partners Advancing Catholic Educa-tion) which allows parents to earn tuition credits through fund raising. (Catholic Herald photo by James Pearson) |
MILWAUKEE — When 58-year-old Mike Schaumann came to St. Vincent Pallotti Catholic School in October 2003, he had a mission. The Milwaukee school faces a challenge many other Catholic schools face — how to provide affordable, quality Catholic education for its families.
“I came from a family of 10 children who all attended Catholic school,” Schaumann said. “My mother didn’t work outside of the home and my father was self-employed, so I am aware of the sacrifices many families have to make in order to provide a Catholic education for their children.”
Within one year of becoming the director of administrative services and development at St. Vincent Pallotti Parish, 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.
“This is the perfect example of thinking outside of the box,” said William Kewan, 60, principal at St. Vincent Pallotti School. “It involves taking the assets, the programs, the things that you have and reorganizing them, putting them together in a way that’s different, but has a much greater benefit.”
By the end of this school year Schaumann estimates Scrip profits will be up 264 percent, Market Day profits will be up 10 percent, and Pick’n Save’s We Care profits will be up 46 percent. Further, this year the school has seen one of the largest K-4 classes in its history.
Through the PACE program, families partner with friends, relatives, neighbors, parishioners, and co-workers to earn rebates from purchases of Market Day food products as well as from everyday purchases at grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, department stores, and a variety of vendors, including select Internet retailers. Families can register their children for this program at birth and begin earning tuition credits so that when their children reach school age they already have years of tuition credits accumulated.
Once children are enrolled in school at St. Vincent Pallotti, which has an enrollment of 121, they also reap the benefits of what are called “general partners.” The rebates earned by general partners go into a pool and the money is then divided equally among school families to use toward tuition.
If students graduate from St. Vincent Pallotti with a surplus of tuition credits, those credits can be applied to the student’s high school education at any of the Catholic high schools within the archdiocese. In fact, families can continue to participate in the PACE program and earn credits toward their education throughout high school.
“We are very committed to making Catholic education affordable for any family from cradle through high school,” Schaumann said.
Schaumann encourages all families to participate in the program, even families who qualify for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program or other grant programs.
“There is always the possibility that they may not qualify for assistance programs in the future,” Schaumann said. “For these families the PACE program can be used as a safety net.”
Scrip, the largest component of the program, involves purchasing gift cards for any of 100 local merchants. The cards are then used the same as cash. Depending upon the vendor, anywhere from 1.5 to 20 percent of the money spent goes directly to the school in the form of rebates. The same is true for the Market Day program; a 10 percent profit from the sale of food products goes directly to the school.
All rebates earned by a family and their “partners” are credited dollar for dollar to the family to use toward tuition. The rebates from Pick ’n Save’s -We Care program and the Catholic Knights VISA-We Share program go into the general fund, 80 percent of which is divided equally among school families and 20 percent of which is put into a school fund to cover administrative costs.
Therese Schaefer has been a member of St. Vincent Pallotti Parish for 20 years and has five children who all attended the school. She has been coordinating the sale of Scrip on a volunteer basis for 10 years and has noticed a change since the PACE program began.
“The parishioners feel more of a connection to the school knowing that they’re contributing to it,” Schaefer said. “It’s really about community, the parish supporting the school, and knowing that your money is going to help someone on a personal level. Some parishioners have asked the school staff to select a family who is struggling and they anonymously donate their credits to that family.”
The response from families has been overwhelmingly positive. Michelle O’Rourke, 33, has a daughter in the K-4 class and another child who will eventually attend the school. She has already earned approximately $1,000 toward this year’s tuition.
“This is the only way we could afford a Catholic education,” O’Rourke said. “We wouldn’t be able to consider it any other way. I go shopping, I buy gas … I spend the money anyway, now I just get credit for it. These are things I would be spending money on anyway.”
“That’s really the beauty of the program and why we call them passive fund raisers,” Schaumann said. “It doesn’t require you to make any extra donations or contributions. These are things you would purchase anyway, things such as food, clothing, gasoline, and entertainment. It doesn’t cost the individual anything extra to participate, it’s the free money that the vendors put out there in terms of the rebates.”
The goals of this program are to make Catholic education more affordable for all families, to increase enrollment at the school, and to eventually get families to a point where they do not have to pay tuition.
“It’s a way for families to achieve a goal that they have for their child — to send them to a Catholic school,” Kewan said. “And it’s a way to ease some of that financial burden.”
For further information about the PACE program, schools are invited to contact Mike Schaumann at (414) 453-5344 or <schaumannm@archmil.org> |
