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| Dear Parishioners, I hope all parishioners will come to the Parish Festival this weekend. It is a great opportunity to meet one another, to have a good time and to provide for the financial needs of the school and Religious Education program. This past few weeks I have been writing to you about the fund raising campaign for Catholic Schools that will begin in October. As Catholics, we believe that children should have a religious education at home and at school. One way we accomplish this is through our Catholic School system. The other is through our Religious Education program (CCD). Why the need for thirty million dollars to increase the present five million dollar endowment? The finances of our schools have changed dramatically over the past thirty years. We no longer have the number of religious women and men to teach in our schools. As a result, the cost of education in Catholic education has increased dramatically. At one time, St. Robert’s had an all religious faculty who received minimum pay. Today, we have an all lay faculty who receive a just wage, but it is still far from what they would receive in a public school. Even with low salaries and countless fund raisers, tuition has gone from a few hundred dollars a year to about twenty-five hundred dollars in our grammar schools and to about seven thousand dollars a year in high schools. We need a larger endowment to take some of the burden off our young families. Pray about what you will be able to pledge. God will bless you. Father Ring |
