Private School Tells 300 Students To Pay Up Or Get Out
A new quarter just started this week at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago, and on the first day back, 300 students were pulled out of class and lined up outside the school, then told to contact their parents and pay their outstanding tuition or they'd have to leave. The Chicago Tribune writes that "by lunchtime, about 100 students were sent home-some confused, some embarrassed and a few angry." The school says parents owe around $450,000 in outstanding tuition payments, far higher than usual, and that they're trying to avoid layoffs and other budget cutbacks. Will the poor economy lead to higher attendance at public schools? "If you want a good education, you have to dish it out," one parent told the paper.
Update: There are a lot of extra details in the article, but to be fair to the school for those who don't read it, let me add: the school says they sent home letters and made phone calls last week, tuition is about $8k a year, and the amounts owed varied from $750 to $5,000. Also:
To prevent losing more students, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago announced last month that $1 million in emergency aid would be available for families that lost jobs this school year. It was deluged with requests within days.
"Marian Catholic High School students told: Pay tuition or go home" [Chicago Tribune]
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Comments:
Not the best way to handle the situation. Recession kids are going to be jacked up enough without being traumatized by this.
I agree that the school was right in telling the parents that, but they should have executed it better. Dragging the children into the middle is not cool, its not their fault.
can't say I blame the school for doing it. I'm sure it could have been handled more discreetly but the way they went about it probably put more of an exclamation point on the issue. $450K across 300 students is only $1500 each, which is actually on the low end as far as private school tuition goes.
Why did they wait this long to throw them out? Wouldn't they keep sending multiple letters home as soon as they started being behind?
Private schools are for stuck up parents who want to shelter their kids from the real world. You do not get a better education there.
Well, I guess all the kids got a nice demonstration of the value of money.
Glad to see that the Catholic school handling this in such a Christian manner!
I work for a private school and instead of doing what the school in the OP did, does it on a personal basis.
The business office would go to each class, call out each student owing and explain that they owe so much and it needs to be in by a certain date or they will not be allowed back in school (dropped).
My guesstimate is that the OP's school didn't have a consistent debtor collection policy up until then.
How many days till we read a article about some kid committing suicide because he was pointed out as a "poor kid" by the staff? This is ridiculous that they handled this so poorly, at least tell the parents to pay up or make arrangements for a public school.
@cartman005: right... because we all live in neighborhoods where the public schools are up to par? Yes, you *do* get a better education in a private school when you live in a shitty public school district.
dead beat parents.
@cartman005: Are you ready to get off your high horse yet? Private school education is NOT wasted, and you get plenty of real world experience and in some cases, better opportunities for future success.
They handled this so poorly, and these kids don't necessarily have a comprehension of the amount of money or effort that goes into paying for private education, whether it's less expensive or more expensive. If the school couldn't get ahold of the delinquent parents or the parents refused to take the calls, they should have arranged meetings with the students during the day and should have told them that they would not be able to return the next day and would be denied entrance if they did not notify their parents of the late payments and they would be kept out of school until the parents paid.
Harsh, sure, but these delinquent parents are the worst example if they want their kids to learn money management.
That sounds like The Chicago Way.
@cartman005: Ignoring everything else, both public and private schools vary widely. There's no sense in such a blanket statement.
Also, hurray for reply!
I went to a Catholic school as a kid, never had this happen though. I have to wonder what biblical virtue this sort of blatant disregard for people is extolling. Now i gotta go read my bible, or find a pdf version and search for "excommunication" and "extortion." While I will contend that it is the responsibility of the parents to pay up, it is also the responsibility of the school to handle the matter professionally, not use the kids education as leverage. It was the first day of school after an extended break, where were the phone calls and meetings between quarters?
@Nighthawke: That's terrible! It's NOT the students that owe the money - it's the PARENTS. Calling the students out individually is not a good alternative to the group as described in the article.
Your policy is cruel! Take it up with the parents!
Haha, that's my old high school (not by choice, but my only other option was Thornton, and this was darn near 20 years ago when it just started getting bad).
Anyhoo, maybe if they didn't waste paper and man hours sending out solicitations for money every other month, they wouldn't be so worried.
And before anyone can brow beat me about that, I know the school doesn't send them out. But still, my poor* family gave enough for me to go there, and the school didn't do anything to persuade me to help them out in the future.
Sorry nuns, but ya gotta go!
@pecan 3.14159265: It depends a lot on where you live. I was lucky enough to come from an excellent public school system, but its not hard to imagine a scenario where sending your child to private school is the clearly superior option.
It sounds like another example of a religion using tactic of guilt and humiliation to control the congregation when other earlier measures failed.
Works even better when you get the children involved. I don't suppose they personally pledged the money to the school. It might have been better if the church leaders had had all the parents stand during a Sunday service and read the amounts owed. If the bills were not settled then their children would not be welcome at school on Monday.
@hillsrovey: At some point, though, if the parents are going to continue dodging phone calls and ignoring letters, is that the student would not be allowed into the school. Better to give the heads up than surprise them with shutting the door in their face at 7am.
@ct_price: Absolutely. This could have been handled any number of ways without putting shame, harassment, etc. on the students.
How embarrassing for those kids. What did they expect them to do, pony up the money right then and there?
The school has to stop whining! My tuition for high school is $11,000 a year! I'm ALWAYS late on payments, it's just something that slips your mind. If my school embarrassed me like that I'd probably walk to the school down the rode and apply there!
@Trai_Dep:
If vouchers were available all that would happen is that the school would raise its tuition the amount of the voucher and offer a few more scholarships. Besides, around here non-Catholic private schools go for upward of $20,000 a year. Even if they didn't raise the tuition, a voucher would cover only a small fraction of the total thus allowing a few more upper middle class kids to enter while gutting public school funding.
@ipodrulz:
"down the rode"
Not getting your $11,000 a years worth I see. Might want to try that other school "down the road".
What if the parents don't pay anyway? Less kids will go to private schools, which will therefore requires less teachers and leads to layoffs.
I guess some of these teachers will be forced into going into the public system if they want to get a salary.
Damocles57: Don't let your obvious personal disdain for religion factor into the fact that private schools are also businesses which have to balance budgets and supply a service. This has nothing to do with religion. There is nothing to suggest that the parents who owed money were members of the same congregation, nor is there any indication that the school is also a church. Don't make this into what it isn't.
This is just awful. Humiliating the students is no way to go about this. I'm sure a lot of the parents are having a tough time with the economy right now, and while I understand the school needs to have money to function, they still owe it to the students and their parents to handle sensitive situations in a professional and discreet manner.
bball123h: Better is it that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay. - Ecclesiastes 5:5
Nothing un-Christian about requiring people to do what they agreed to do. Just because God says to be gracious does not mean God also said to be foolish with money and let people off the hook.
@cartman005: Well, lets see...I went to public school in the US for 3rd and 4th grade, then my parents got tired of me getting beat up so I went to private school for 5th-8th grade and when I went back to public school for HS, I didn't need a copy of my TENTH grade English book from my public High School as I already OWNED a copy...you see, it had been my EIGHTH grade English textbook at the private school. I liked it, I sailed through HS because of the prep I'd already done in a private Jr High.
@pecan 3.14159265 (because comments still won't work on my browser, curse you Denton!): Agreed that this isn't a religious issue. Any private school could have done this.
I have to argue as others have that private schools are not just for "stuck up parents". I was in a horrible school district when I was in high school, third from the bottom in my state. Most of the people in my private school were in a similar state in terms of choice of high schools. Far from this being an easy choice, most parents struggled to pay their tuition as they came from solidly blue collar middle class families. I can really feel the pain because while help from the diocese was there, it could not reach everyone. I doubt these parents let the tuition go idly considering how their children's collegiate futures depended so strongly on being in this high school. Just try getting into a decent school when the local public school gives "B's" for just showing up.
I must add, I know several people from Marian and that is NOT a good public school district by any means.
Kids don't have to go to Catholic school. That's what public schools are for. I think more businesses should do things like this. Can't say they didn't warn 'em.
I always pay every bill on time or early so I have a big complaint with people who aren't perfect like me in every way.
Wouldn't Chicago be a little cold in the second week in March?
Maulleigh: Exactly. Private schools are businesses as well, because public schools are government funded and are not businesses. Private schools have a responsibility to all of the students to provide education and services accordingly, and when a set of parents can't pay, the quality of education suffers for all the other students whose parents did pay on time.
The article specified technology issues at the school as result of a storm. It's reasonable that parents were not able to pay during the time the storm disabled their technology, and it's reasonable that the school was not able to check for payments. But in a case like this, I would get in the car and go hand them a check. Deadlines are deadlines. Pay early, pay on time. If you wouldn't pay your credit card the very single day it was absolutely due and go "oops" if the system was down and wouldn't let you make a payment, why would you do it with your child's education?
This happened at my private college all the time. If students had balances, professors were told to call their names at the beginning of the first class of the semester, give them a red slip, and kick them out. Same thing with dorms - if you didn't settle up, the lock to your door was changed.
@Claytons:
FTFA: "adding that families in financial stress can work with the school. " and "Hilbing said parents were notified twice last week-via letters sent home with students and the U.S. Postal Service-that their tuition payments had to be updated by Monday or their children would be sent home."
Based on that, the school didn't put this on the students- the parents did.
The Catholic church is sitting on huge piles of money, and they have to publicly shame children to collect on some back invoices?
@cartman005: You clearly don't come from the DC area. If you want your kids of have any kinds of an education in Wash DC you almost awayls have to send them to a private school as the public schools are closing faster then banks and violence each day is outrageous.
@Damocles57: What the hack are you talking about? Religion has nothing to do with this, its a private business the school is running. They wanted payments paid, not kids praying harder. You fail.
Right on. If properly motivated you can learn everythig you will need in life while laying on the ground in front of the fireplace in your log cabin home.
@pecan 3.14159265 From the experience of myself and my friends who went to private school and had middle class families, your parents let you know exactly how much that private school educaton is costing them everytime they see a report card.
I understand that this wasn't the best way to handle it but it was hardly being singled out as the poor kid. We're talking 300 kids sent away!
@shadydentist: Yeah, I grew up in a public district that was so good the private schools were basically for kids who'd gotten expelled. Went to law school in a district that was so bad I didn't know a single liberal-ass professor with their kids in the publics, because they were HORRIFIC.
Where I live now, they're fairly equal in most cases, so there's a lot of parental choice involved w/r/t wanting a religious component to education.
But... But... But...
Vouchers!! School Choice!! Cheaper/better/faster!!
Ponies. For crying out loud, Ponies!!
(Education: expensive. The Alternative: Even More Expensive)