Catholic-school parents in New York bear a double financial burden: paying their kids’ tuitions on top of the public-school tax they still are obligated to fork over for a service they don’t use. By any measure, this is a sacrifice, one they take on willingly—even enthusiastically—for a variety of reasons.
Some tell us it’s for the fine academics of Catholic schools, which often far exceed their government-school counterparts. Others rightly note the fact that our schools prioritize our religious faith and values. Some put a premium on the order and discipline that are hallmarks of our schools: from the uniforms to the zero tolerance for antisocial or disrespectful behavior toward teachers and fellow students. Still others see our schools as a refuge from the “woke agenda” of New York’s public-school bureaucracy and teachers’ unions.
For most, I’d hazard a guess, all of these factors come into play to some extent when making a decision to choose a Catholic education. Certainly, they all contribute to what makes our schools so successful.
Now it seems that, at least for some lawmakers, the very characteristics that set us apart and help us produce well-rounded, loving, and productive young women and men must be stamped out in favor of a gender ideology that would force us to deny the inherent differences between boys and girls. Doing so would undermine the core philosophy for which our parents choose the Church’s schools in the first place.
