A Friend In Jesus
NY’s new Catholic PAC
EDWARD Cardinal Egan’s funeral Mass at St. Patrick’s on Tuesday was celebrated amid scaffolding stretching from floor to ceiling. The cathedral is in the midst of an overhaul aimed at preserving this architectural and spiritual gem for generations of New Yorkers to come.
Two days after Cardinal Egan was laid to rest, a group of Catholic laymen gathered just across the street. They too had a preservation project in mind: New York’s Catholic schools.
Over drinks in the historic Madison Room, with Timothy Cardinal Dolan in attendance, more than 100 of these lay Catholic leaders — including Alfred Kelly Jr., former president of American Express and President/CEO of the 2014 NY/NJ Super Bowl; Samuel Di Piazza Jr., chairman of the Mayo Clinic and former CEO of Pricewater house Coopers; and Al Smith IV, CEO of A.E. Smith Associates and greatgrandson of the first Catholic to run for president on a majorparty ticket — announced a new Political Action Committee.
It’s called Catholics Count, and it aims to support a Catholic school system that, despite the heroic work it does, is too often dissed by the state’s political class.
“Finally the Catholic church will have a voice in Albany commensurate with our numbers and with the contributions our church makes to our state and our communities,” says Robert Flanigan, cofounder of Educate LLC, a company that coaches schools in technology. “Especially in education.”
In essence, the new PAC is an attempt to restore some sanity to education policy by rewarding success and punishing failure in a state capital that does just the opposite.
Exhibit A: New York’s traditional public schools.
At more than 500 public schools across the state, according to a recent Families for Excellent Schools report, 90 percent — yes, 90 percent — can’t read or do math. In Rochester, only 3 percent of highschool seniors are collegeready. And if you’re a young black male in New York City, the odds say you’ll never even see a highschool diploma. Exhibit B: the Catholic schools. Even before there were public schools, New York had Catholic schools giving kids the tools they needed to become productive citizens while helping immigrants as similate into American life. At the system’s peak in the 1960s, New York had 1,400 Catholic schools.
Today, that’s down to 520, but they’re still doing miracles. In New York’s innercity Catholic schools, 65 percent of students are below the poverty rate. Many aren’t even Catholic. But 97 percent graduate in four years, and 95 percent go on to college.
In short, while Albany may debate the Dream Act, it won’t mean anything without the grammar schools and high schools that put kids on a path to college.
Here’s the problem. New York’s traditional public schools already enjoy the highest funding per pupil in the nation, while Catholic schools are closing. Albany being what it is, even the taxcredit bill that would help keep these Catholic schools afloat includes yet more money for the traditional public schools, too.
Enter Catholics Count. Thursday evening, it announced it’s already raised $3 million, with the goal of $10 million over the next four years — which would put it up with the teachers unions.
And maybe make it a little harder for Albany to do what Gov. Cuomo did last year: renege on his assurance to the bishops that the tuition tax credit was a done deal.
In a state where 40 percent of the population is Catholic, there’s a sense among lay leaders that their church doesn’t get much respect. No doubt, some of this is because Catholic teachings on issues such as abortion and samesex marriage are at odds with blue state liberalism.
Still, when it comes to education, there’s another fact at play here: Many would be happy to see the Catholic schools fold because each day they show up their publicschool counterparts by demonstrating that black and Latino kids can learn and achieve in the right school. All while saving New York’s taxpayers billions.
In a Wall Street Journal interview three years back, Cardinal Dolan put it this way: “Some people say, ‘Cardinal Dolan, you need to go to Albany and say, If we don’t get state aid by September,
I’m going to close all my schools.’ I say to them, ‘You don’t think there’d be somersaults up and down the corridors?’ ”
The charter folks get the same disrespect because they’re up against the same enemy: an unaccountable monopoly propped up by an unholy alliance of pols and teachers unions.
“We’ve got an educational crisis,” says Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of the most successful charter network in the state. “We need all hands on deck, and that includes parochial schools.”
Every man and woman in the Madison Room on Thursday understands this. And they think it’s time someone evened the odds.