Do Catholic Schools See a Future in the Latino Community?

In the interest of full disclosure I must ‘fess that I’m the product of a Catholic education (my present church going record notwithstanding). Friday mass in elementary and secundaria, and theology class high school were staples of my formal upbringing. So it’s no surprise to me to read that the Catholic Church is actively recruiting Latino students.

An article in US Catholic breaks the story down to these main ideas:

It’s a movement fueled by three converging trends: An estimated 70 percent of adult Latinos are Catholic, according to Georgetown University researchers. Just 63 percent of 24-year-old Hispanics surveyed had graduated from high school, compared with 87 percent of blacks and 93 percent of white non-Hispanics, according to census data. And numerous studies have found that Hispanic students in Catholic schools perform better than they do in public schools.

The charge began two years ago, led by the University of Notre Dame which commissioned a Task Force on the Participation of Latinos in Catholic Schools. The stated goal is to double the participation of Latinos in Catholic Schools by 2020. According to the study the present participation of Latinos is 3 percent.

Part of the problem is that Catholic School is expensive and few Latinos can afford it or are aware of scholarship opportunities. Another is immigration. Across Latin America there is no such thing as a parish school; there are “academies” of sorts where children from across a city go (that was my experience in Nuevo Laredo).

Another problem, though, might be the recession and the Church itself. While the US Catholic is reporting on an initiative to attract Latinos, Minnesota Public Radio is reporting the opposite. A Catholic School in Minneapolis that served Latino students is closing.

San Miguel Middle School is one of three Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis that announced last week it would be closing at the end of the school year.

There’s a business side to running a private school, and in the case of these three schools it isn’t working. The students who receive scholarships to attend San Miguel will lose the money, it won’t follow them to another Catholic School.

Under recessionary circumstances, it’ll be hard for the Catholic Church to reach it goal. Here’s the MPR piece: