The city’s Catholic schools are losing a large number of students to tuition-free charter schools.
Over the last decade, the number of students attending Catholic schools has plummeted by 35 percent, from 134,948 in 2002-2003 to 87,301 last year, the city’s Independent Budget Office found.
At the same time, the number of kids attending charter schools jumped to 58,797 last year from 2,422 a decade ago.
One education expert said the two events are directly related.
“There’s draw-off of students from Catholic schools to charter schools. Parents want an alternative to the neighborhood public school. They’re going to charter schools because they don’t have to pay tuition,” said Professor Joseph Viteritti, chairman of Hunter College’s Urban Affairs Department, who has written extensively about school choice.
Typical tuition at a Catholic K-8 school is about $4,000. High school tuition averages $7,500.
Charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately run, are tuition-free.
Catholic educators agreed that the charters are siphoning their prospective students.
“We do lose children to charter schools. Tuition is an issue. We have a large number of students on waiting lists, but tuition is an obstacle,” said Fran Davies, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of New York’s education system.
The network of Catholic schools has undergone a painful retrenchment to adapt to 21st century realities — eliminating 58 schools since 2011. But officials insist the worst is behind them.
“The Archdiocese of New York has now regionalized its school system to assure a vibrant future for Catholic education, and has seen dramatic growth in its early childhood programs, adding 2,300 new students in the past year,” said Timothy McNiff, the archdiocese’s superintendent of schools.
In another development, enrollment at Jewish schools has surpassed those attending Catholic schools for the first time in the city’s history.
A surge in the Orthodox Jewish population has caused the number of students attending yeshivas to soar from 73,254 a decade ago to 94,589 last year.
The findings are likely to revive a campaign to persuade the state to pass a law that would provide tax credits for school donors.
“Catholic schools may have stayed open if the education tax credit was available,” said state Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn), who is sponsoring the legislation, which provides tax credits to donors to private or public schools.