DN Editorial: District and Archdiocese welcome new investments
LAST WEEK's reprieve of four Catholic high schools due to the efforts of a group of private donors was good news for the students, parents, and the Archdiocese - and the group's quick turnaround in raising $12 million from private donors to save the schools was a remarkable feat.

LAST WEEK's reprieve of four Catholic high schools due to the efforts of a group of private donors was good news for the students, parents, and the Archdiocese - and the group's quick turnaround in raising $12 million from private donors to save the schools was a remarkable feat.
The fact that the news came just days after a $1.5 million donation to the Philadelphia School District from the William Penn Foundation is also worth noting. They are unrelated efforts, but they signal a trend that schools across the country are seeing: more private, individual and corporate concerns stepping up to the education plate with checkbooks in hand. This is a trend we applaud, with certain caveats.
(Full disclosure: William Penn Foundation also funds "It's Our Money," a partnership between the Daily News and WHYY).
The Catholic-schools action aims to raise $15 million by May, and to create a foundation to help raise $100 million in the next five years to help all archdiocesan schools.
The William Penn grant will be used to fund a Boston Consulting Group study on restructuring the district. Jeremy Nowak, the foundation's president, said he will also help the district look for other funding from philanthropic and nonprofit sources.
The William Penn grant is not the only or the first private grant to the district; in fact, last year, it received nearly $4 million in such money, including $100,000 for the Great Schools Compact, with potentially millions more from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Recently, a coalition of parents formed to raise funds for Center City neighborhood public schools.
It's been clear for a while that the old public-education funding formulas and funding sources aren't enough, and yet many taxpayers are loathe to embrace tax increases to give the schools more. Since society as a whole benefits from an excellent educational system, the "investor pool" for funding should be much wider, and the ways of thinking about funding more flexible.
In recent years, strapped school districts across the country have looked to advertising, naming rights and other sources of funds. Some ideas can cause more problems than they solve.
The biggest potential downside to increased private and corporate contributions to education is that state legislators - ours, especially - will see this as a way to minimize their own responsibility to public education and to cut funding even further.
Another caveat: While more private money in public education can be a good thing, the value of more public money for private, religious education - as the Archdiocese pushes for vouchers - is not so clear.
What is clear is that this could be the time when ideologies are put aside and everyone concerned with education - public, private and parochial - can pool solutions and ideas on what works, and how best to fund them.