The application period is now open for Catholic school tuition assistance covering the 2017-18 academic year in our archdiocese.

Assistance expenditures will include $2 million from benefactors of One Faith, One Hope, One Love. The number and dollar amounts of individual awards will be determined by the board of the Catholic Education Foundation for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (CEF) based on an assessment of needs and volume of applicants.

Application details and options can be found here.

The CEF board, at its regular meeting today, set the timetable for campaign fund assistance. In other business, the board approved $335,000 in other expenditures as follows:

• A parish religious education Catechetical Institute project ($85,000): The archdiocese is developing a Catechetical Institute combining digital instruction with “discipleship-focused process of forming parish catechists and schoolteachers.”

• Governance ($72,000): The administrative model for archdiocesan high schools includes boards of limited jurisdiction. Needs include continuing oversight and board training. Staff members are attending board meetings as advisers to the schools, the first step to providing additional oversight and support. Additional staff time is necessary for individual attention within each of the high schools.

• Professional development ($71,000): The Catholic Schools Office, attentive to surveys of principals, is planning programs for this year and developing a long-term strategy to include. A significant need exists to recruit and train future school leaders as well as to retain current ones. According to the Schools Office, leadership in our schools has been changing at a rate of almost 25% for the past two years.

• Summer school ($40,000): Extension and enhancement of programs, with emphasis on remediation.

• Preschool programs ($40,000) to provide oversight, consultation, and other support for schools considering or implementing such programs. To date, 65 preschools exist with an additional five scheduled to open next fall.

• Latino Outreach ($27,000). Programs previously targeted elementary schools, but these students are beginning to enter our high schools and services

Previous allocations include K-4 religion teacher materials ($32,000) approved in June.