Charitable trust provides families with educational options

By Sean Gallagher

When a new academic year started in August, many students attending Catholic schools in Marion County did so because of the scholarships they received from the CHOICE Charitable Trust.

CHOICE, which stands for “Creating Hope and Opportunity in Children’s Education,” was founded in 1991.

It awards need-based scholarships to families living in Marion County who want to send their children to private schools in kindergarten through eighth grade, but find it financially difficult to do so.

Currently, CHOICE awards ­approximately 800 scholarships annually.

In the 2006-07 academic year, 476 students attending 22 Catholic schools in Marion County received more than $583,000 in CHOICE scholarships.

Overall, since 1991, more than

60 percent of CHOICE’s scholarships have been awarded to students attending Catholic schools.

Robert Hoy, executive director of CHOICE, said his organization would like to award scholarships to families ­throughout the state, but can only award grants according to the charitable ­contributions available to it.

“We can’t meet [all] the funding desires right now,” said Hoy, who is a ­member of St. Jude Parish in Indianapolis.

Hoy said that there were 100 families in Marion County last year who applied for scholarships, but did not receive them due to lack of funding.

One way that CHOICE has worked in 2007 to increase educational options for Hoosier families was in its advocacy for a state tax credit for those who make contributions to private ­scholarship granting organizations like CHOICE.

The proposed tax credit almost made it into the state budget.

“It would have been tremendous,” Hoy said. “And it made it to the 11th hour and then it was put out of the budget—on the last day, actually.”

According to Fred Klipsch, a member of CHOICE’s board of directors, the tax credit’s impact could have been ­tremendous.

“Instead of having just [800] children in central Indiana getting to go to private schools, that would have provided ­potentially enough for 5,000 children at a total cost of $3,000 [each] to go to private schools,” said Klipsch, a member of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Carmel, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese.

Despite the failure in getting the tax credit passed and signed into law, CHOICE is forging on to help as many families as it can.

Many of those families end up enrolling their children at the Mother Theodore Catholic Academies.

The academies are Central Catholic School, Holy Angels School, Holy Cross Central School, St. Andrew & St. Rita Catholic Academy, St. Anthony School and St. Philip Neri School, all in Indianapolis.

Connie Zittnan, director of the ­academies, said that CHOICE scholarships help stabilize the enrollment in the schools.

“A stabilized enrollment is a huge factor with regard to total school improvement and school-wide success,” Zittnan said. “The longer we have our children, the ­better they become academically.

“When you can work with the same child year after year, we’re able to move that child academically further than if we continually get new children in because you’re always working with the new child at various academic levels.”

CHOICE has recognized the advantage that staying in a private school for many years can provide to children, and has ­chosen to increase the size of their ­scholarships the longer that a student stays at a particular school.

Currently, students are initially awarded half scholarships up to $1,200 per year. Students who remain in a school for four to six years can see their scholarship increase to as much as $1,400 annually. That amount can increase to $1,600 per year if a student is in a school for seven years or more.

Annette “Mickey” Lentz, archdiocesan executive director for Catholic education and faith formation, has been active in Catholic schools in the archdiocese for more than 40 years and appreciates the support the archdiocese receives from CHOICE.

“Working with the CHOICE board has inspired us to be the very best we can be in our urban schools,” she said. “This is not always an easy task, but the support and the expectation for greatness have ­encouraged us to move forward.”

Hoy would like to see those ­opportunities expand both to students in high school and to all students statewide.

“It just takes more funding,” he said. “… We will continue to work legislatively to do whatever we can through scholarship tax credits—whatever it has to be—to ­continue to provide families, especially the underserved, options in education.”

(For more information about the CHOICE Charitable Trust, log on to www.choicetrust.org or call 317-951-8781.) †