Marion St. Mary School accepting applications for EdChoice program

On Apr 15, 2021

Seventh and eighth graders at St. Mary School listen to a classmate give a presentation on medieval Europe pre-pandemic.

When Chris and Destiny Copley moved from Georgia to Marion last year, they struggled to find a school that would fit for their six-year-old daughter, Emma Copley.

After seeing signs around town and talking to her mother-in-law, the Copleys decided to enroll their daughter at St. Mary School. But with tuition costing more than $4,000 at the Catholic school, the couple needed financial support. That was when EdChoice came in.

St. Mary is now accepting applications for The Educational Choice Scholarship (EdChoice) Program. The statewide initiative provides students from designated public schools the opportunity to attend participating private schools, states the Ohio Department of Education website. The program also provides scholarships to low-income students in grades kindergarten through 12th grade. EdChoice can give up to 60,000 state-funded scholarships to students who attend or are assigned to an EdChoice designated public school buildings.

An application is completed through the private or parochial school once a student has applied and been accepted by the school. The EdChoice scholarship amount is currently $4,650 for grades K-8, which is the total tuition for St. Mary. For grades 9-12, the amount is at $6,000. The program will pay either the scholarship amount or the private school’s actual tuition amount, whichever is less.

The priority application period for the traditional EdChoice Scholarship program began March 2 and ends May 15, while the Expansion Scholarship program opened February 1 and ends April 30. Additionally, a second application period began July 1, 2020, and remains open through June 30.

St. Mary Administrative Manager Kathy Bramel said 80% of students are on an EdChoice scholarship.

New changes

In November, the Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 89, which reduced the number of designated public schools to 470. This includes schools ranked in the bottom 20% for performance on state report cards and those with at least 20% of their students deemed economically disadvantaged under federal criteria.

Vouchers are also available through the expansion program to students in families earning less than 250% of the federal poverty level, or about $65,000 for a family of four, up from 200% of the poverty standard.

Without changes to the program criteria, the list of eligible schools was slated to double to more than 1,200 for the 2021-2022 school year and include some schools in wealthier districts, raising questions about the fairness of provided taxpayer funding to families who presumably could afford private school tuition.

A new opportunity

According to a news release from St. Mary, the Copleys said they enjoy that the school is open full-time as well as the intimate classroom experience for Emma.

“We’ve been really pleased with the smaller class sizes,” Destiny said in the release. “Also, we’ve been pleased that she seems to have a community where all the teachers know who she is.”