Community Alternative To Government Schooling

When staying home full time to educate the children poses a challenge, a community-run school could be a solution. Just like it was for a group of concerned parents in St. John:

Saint John -- In NB the Catholic school system dwindled away into nothingness in 1967 as a result of the amalgamation of school boards. Since then the province has had neither Catholic boards nor Catholic private schools.

Thanks to the initiative of a group of determined parents, the Divine Mercy School, which aims to "provide a rich Catholic education with a high standard of academic excellence," will open its doors in St. John in September, 2003. The nonprofit school will charge a tuition fee of $250 per month, well below any other Canadian private school...

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Unfortunately, the old Catholic Insight article is no longer available online. But the "our history" page on the Divine Mercy Catholic School website gives out a lot more details:

Early in the Jubilee year 2000, several concerned parents began to meet regularly to discuss the possibility of starting a Catholic school. Although there were no private Catholic schools in New Brunswick at the time, these parents were confident that a school could be formed that would provide small classes, Christian values and a positive learning environment.

The more the parents met, the more they realized that this endeavor was a real possibility. The long hours of preparation were inevitable but everyone was willing to work hard to investigate and discuss legal implications, financial possibilities, charitable status, curriculum choices, mission statements, teachers, Board of directors, location, students, class sizes and a host of other pertinent issues.

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Note that the tuition is just $250 per month. That's roughly three times less than what the government spends on an average public school student. Somehow, a group of concerned parents can offer education at much lower price, yet of better quality than government-run schools. And, you may be surprised, but private schooling works not just for Catholics:

We asked the Black Business and Professional Association, which sponsors the gala, to fill the Toronto Sun’s table with young people, so they could see what the evening, honouring outstanding black achievers, is all about.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more impressive group of young people than the BBPA chose for us.

They were from a private, Seventh-day Adventist school, the Crawford Academy, located near Finch Ave. and Bathurst St. Founded in 1953, it has classes from kindergarten to Grade 12 and is one of four affiliated Adventist schools in the GTA.

Crawford has 480 students, 70-80% black, and almost all from visible minority groups.

An astounding 98% of its graduates are accepted into their first choice of university.

Talking to these impressive young people, in Grades 9 to 12, it wasn’t hard to see why. They were polite, articulate, confident — all planning careers as lawyers, doctors, engineers, physiotherapists and media professionals, many involved in extra-curricular activities, including student council, music, sports, film-making, volunteerism.

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I bet it has something to do with the school not including victimhood lessons of all sorts in its curriculum, preferring instead to give students more hours of the subjects of their choice, to have them better prepared for the university. And, teaching faith and family values instead of moral relativism and "multisexualism" must have also contributed to the students' success. At least - you won't see many teens there contracting STDs or getting pregnant in an attempt to "explore their sexuality".

Could such schools be a solution to the parents in Hamilton, which had to pull their kids from public schools, because the local school board didn't even want to wait for the McGuinty’s sex ed extremist curriculum to become mandatory, establishing their own rules for teaching sexually perverse behavior under the guise of "inclusiveness"?

Obviously, they are not likely to see any help from the government. Obviously they'd be still forced to pay twice - for the public system they can't use, through their taxes, and for the private school - out of pocket (or, maybe, by skipping a day of work to volunteer at the classroom). But giving children a high-quality education and true values is worth the extra effort. And, with the right efforts, we may eventually get voucher-funded home- and community schooling system from coast to coast.