offered with all due respect to His Excellency the Bishop

 I offer the following with enormous respect for the Catholic educators, here and elsewhere. 

I am not otherwise going to offer further comment on the letter from Bishop McManus in today's paper, but when we get into school finance, we're on my home turf, so I did want to correct the misapprehension here:

The best example of how the Catholic Church is helping the city is in the area of elementary and high school education. Each year, hundreds of young people are opting to enroll in our schools. Catholic schools located in the Diocese of Worcester have 5,033 students enrolled this year which saves the taxpayers and the communities in Worcester County over $65,000,000 dollars. 

In Worcester this year we have 687 students in our parish and diocesan schools who are residents of the city, excluding those who attend private Catholic schools. Using the latest reported average cost per student in Worcester, St. Paul Diocesan Jr/Sr High School, St. Peter Central Catholic Elementary School and Our Lady of the Angels Elementary School saved the city $10,380,735 this school year.

There are several common errors here that are at work:

• Most of the funding for the Worcester Public Schools is not from "the city" at all: Worcester is a majority state funded district, thus only 26 cents of every dollar we spend is a city dollar.
  
  
• Far from costing taxpayers---Worcester or otherwise--nothing, the private and parochial schools in the city of Worcester are, by state law, provided with bus transportation at no cost to the diocese, the schools, or the families of students. Thus some of those WPS taxpayer dollars are indeed supporting the diocesan schools.
  
  
• Finally, the "average cost per student in Worcester," as supported by the state's progressive--that is, meeting greater need with greater dollars--funding system funds a student body that is 60% low income, 31.7% English learner, and 20.9% students with disabilities.
  I am quite sure that is not reflective of the student body of Worcester's diocesan schools. The $10M figure thus is simply incorrect; the student body of the diocesan schools, were they to join the Worcester Public Schools would not cost the district anywhere near that kind of money to educate. Those dollars thus are not being saved.