The School Choice and School Financial Sustainability Committee was formed in 2022. The committee consisted of leaders from Catholic school environments most familiar with the approaches and operations of school finances along with experts on school choice and the implications of school choice as it relates to schools' financial structures.
The committee met 5 times over a 6-month period in 2022. The committee’s core responsibilities included gathering, analyzing, and reviewing existing financial models; identifying available public revenue streams, both federal and by state; understanding the intersection of private philanthropy, tuition, church/parish/religious order subsidies, student/parish/family discounts, and scholarship supports; determining the general cost of living, population and demographics influences based on geographic regions; and building a versatile school financial model to encompass a wide variety of Catholic Schools with various grade configurations, geographic locations, and governance models.
- Katie Everett, The Lynch Foundation, Committee Chair
- Geofrey Boisi, Leadership Roundtable
- John Eriksen, The Drexel Fund
- Tara Gohlmann, Buckingham Browne & Nichols
- Ed Kirby, Consultant
- Father Brendan McGuire, St. Joseph Financial Services
- Kathy Mears, FACTS Education Solutions
- Tommy Shultz, American Federation for Children
- Sara Snider, William E. Simon Foundation
In the summer of 2022, The Lynch Foundation engaged independent consultant Tara Gohlmann alongside their summer intern Daphne Barrientos-Vega for the project. Tara and Daphne organized the data and determined the best approach to include all of the necessary components of the school finance modules. Once the data was collected, they spent the remainder of the summer building and designing the model through several iterations. In 2023, the committee shared the model with school leaders from across the country with a diverse set of school structures and made final revisions based on their feedback.
The ultimate goal of the model is to support school leaders nationally working in tuition-based schools, specifcally Catholic Schools. To achieve this goal we hope to partner with organizations such as FACTS, NCEA, and all of the Catholic Colleges across the country to disseminate the tool to as many school leaders as possible.
How To Use The School Finance Model
To assist with using the spreadsheet, here are some visual tutorials
