By Sr. Mary Alma, C.K.
Principal, St. James School in Crete
And Fr. Christopher Stoley
Chief administrative officer, pastor
St. James School in Crete is a quaint little school in the heart of Saline County. We’ve been around since Nebraska was hardly old enough to drive a car; at a time when cars weren’t yet invented. Over the last 138 years since we held our first classes, we’ve provided a high-quality educational setting where kids can thrive academically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.
Key to our success is recognizing that parents are primarily responsible for their children’s education. Like any good school, our school is a partnership with parents.
When parents choose St. James, they come to a school where the cost to educate a child is just over $6,000, tuition is around $3,000, and the average parent is paying $75 a month for a child to attend our school.
The reason for this disparity between the cost to educate and what parents pay is that we are a culturally diverse school with a high low-income population. We have 71 students enrolled in kindergarten through sixth grade. Just shy of 80% of those students are Hispanic. And just over 40% of our students are on free or reduced lunch.
Like other non-public schools across Nebraska, we do everything to keep our school affordable. But we still have families who lack the financial means to choose our school, and we know there are other families who don’t even consider us an option because of their socioeconomic status. No parent should have to experience this.
Thankfully, over the last two years, the Nebraska Legislature made tremendous strides in catching our state up with the rest of the country on school choice. We became the 49th state in the country to pass a school choice program in 2023, and we passed another program in 2024. (If you think being a Husker football fan is hard, imagine being nearly dead-last in the country when it comes to giving parents educational freedom.)
These two school choice programs provided scholarships assistance to 4,500 students from low-income and working class families across Nebraska. Under the scholarship program passed in 2023, 38% of students on scholarship were students of color, 12% were students with special education needs, 43 students were from military families, and 13 students were denied by public schools for option enrollment.
Under the scholarship program passed in 2024, 84% of funds were distributed to students at or below 213% of federal poverty. For context, 213% of federal poverty is a yearly income of $66,000 for a family of four.
On average, students were receiving around $2,000 for an education scholarship, still well below the cost to educate a child, even in the most affordable schools.
Nearly 50% of the students at St. James received these scholarships.
It’s difficult to relay in words the lifeline these scholarships have been. Our families are predominantly poor and working-class migrants making their way in America. Like so many of our own ancestors, they’re here to give their children opportunities and dreams they never had for themselves.
These scholarships ease the financial strain our parents experience. With scholarship assistance, they can more easily afford their groceries. They can avoid that second or third job, and spend some time at home to be an active parent in the lives of their children. They can save up a little money for when the tires go bad or the water heater finally cracks.
As we celebrate National School Choice Week across the country and in Nebraska, we hope the incredible families of St. James Catholic School remain in your heart and mind. We pray they help you re-think this issue, or deepen your convictions about why it’s so critical that Nebraska’s low-income and at-risk students have access to school choice scholarship programs. At a time when there is so much instability in the world, let’s give these families the certainty of an education that is best for them.
This item originally appeared in the Lincoln Journal Star.
