School closures\/delays in the Coastal Bend-area due to winter storm<\/a><\/p>\nSigned into law in May by Gov. Greg Abbott, the program will provide eligible families up to $10,500 per student each year to help cover private school tuition. Applications open Feb. 4 and run through March 17, but participation among private schools is optional \u2014 and locally, not all are signing on.<\/p>\n
The Diocese of Corpus Christi, which oversees 12 eligible Catholic schools, says the program offers families another educational option at a time when public schools are facing financial strain. The announcement comes as seven Corpus Christi Independent School District campuses are being consolidated amid a $27 million funding deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a full community of faith. We embrace the whole child,\u201d said Dr. Rebecca Hammel, superintendent of the Diocese of Corpus Christi. \u201cOne of the reasons that we support this program is that parents are the primary educator of their children. They ought to decide where their children go to school. That shouldn\u2019t be determined by a ZIP code or other financial constraints.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hammel emphasized that Catholic schools are open to students of all faiths and are rooted in close-knit communities that extend beyond the classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re able to partner with parents to have that community that becomes a spiritual hub for the whole family, not just the child,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
That sense of community is what drew Amanda Cavazos to St. Patrick Catholic School. A parent who later joined the school\u2019s staff, Cavazos said the support families show one another is constant and often unseen.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople genuinely want to help,\u201d Cavazos said. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t even know they were donating this money. We had a parent at the book fair donate $100 for kids who didn\u2019t have enough money \u2014 that\u2019s the kind of community we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not all private schools, however, view the voucher program as a good fit.<\/p>\n
The Jewish Community Center\u2019s preschool and kindergarten, which enrolls about 180 students \u2014 only four of whom are Jewish \u2014 has opted out of the program, citing concerns about maintaining its accelerated academic approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an accelerated program, meaning that we are very flexible in education,\u201d said Manuela Sela, the JCC\u2019s preschool director. \u201cWe can work with students one on one, and when they graduate our kindergarten program, they\u2019re at a first- or second-grade level by CCISD standards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sela said participating in the state program would limit that flexibility and make it harder to prepare students for first grade at their current pace.<\/p>\n
As families prepare to apply for vouchers in the coming weeks, private schools across Corpus Christi continue to evaluate whether participation aligns with their educational philosophies \u2014 underscoring that the impact of the state\u2019s new program will vary from campus to campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Texas launches its new school voucher program, Corpus Christi private schools weigh the benefits\u2014and drawbacks\u2014for local families.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-139453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}