Parish Subsidy

The parish community plays a vital role in the success of our school. Below are some interesting facts about how the Parish subsidies the School. 

As you probably already know, the tuition paid by school parents for each child does not completely cover the cost of that child’s education.

• The more students enrolled from a family, the larger the subsidy from the parish.
• As a school, we depend on the generosity of our parish community to provide the additional funds to cover the costs of our school program. The members of the parish have always been willing to subsidize the education of our young people, knowing that they are helping to form these children in the Catholic faith.

The funds that are available for the parish subsidy to the school come directly from the weekly “offertory collection” at St. Germaine Church.

• No money is available from the Archdiocese of Chicago.
• Currently, the parish subsidy provides approximately 14% of the revenue needed to run the school. (By extension, the tuition collected provides about 86% of the operating costs.)
• The parish subsidy contribution is about 18.4% of the total amount donated to the parish through the collection.

In planning the projected budget scenarios for the next school year, we submitted proposals that asked the parish for a subsidy of about $180,000.

• A subsidy of this amount equates to approximately $683 per student.
• The larger the number of students from a family, the greater the parish contribution since the tuition scale offers significant “discounts” for families with two or more students.
• Father Furlan has indicated that a subsidy in this range is possible. However, knowing as we all do, that budgets seldom remain within their set limits, we need to be conservative in our request. For example, if the heating system required major repairs, the subsidy amount could rise significantly. The parish is only able to offer a subsidy from the funds it has available.

Each year, when the budget projections are made, we establish two tuition “tiers”—one for active parishioners and one for inactive parishioners.

• Our assumption is that those families who attend Mass each weekend and support the parish through the offertory collection are “active” parishioners. Those families who have not supported the parish through their offertory contributions will be described as “inactive.” The tuition schedule for inactive members requires tuition payments close to the actual cost per student.