Letter
Letter from Archbishop Lucas to the U.S. House of Representatives on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (2015)
Letter from Archbishop George J. Lucas, Chairman, USCCB Committee on Catholic Education to the U.S. House of Representatives on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, March 30, 2015
I write you today on behalf of the Committee on Catholic Education of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, to urge your support for the full authorized funding of $60 million in the Fiscal Year 2016 Financial Services Appropriations Bill for the three sectors of the school improvement initiative, which includes the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). We also want to request your support for important reforms to OSP, to improve access to and participation in the program and to ensure greater accountability and effectiveness of the schools that serve OSP students.
Since its inception in 2004, OSP has been an educational lifeline for nearly 6,000 children from low-income families in the District of Columbia. The great success of the program is clearly demonstrated by its strong educational outcomes and parental satisfaction with the program. With a better than 90 percent graduation rate (30 points higher than D.C. public schools) and nearly 90 percent college enrollment rate, OSP has provided a vital opportunity to the 6,000 children who have participated in the program.
For nearly 150 years, the Catholic Church has unequivocally taught that parents have the right and responsibility to serve as the primary educators of their children. To assist them in this sacred duty, the Church has articulated clearly that children have the universal right to an education, and the state has a fundamental obligation to support parents in fulfilling such a right. In the 1965 Declaration on Christian Education (Gravissimum Educationis), the Second Vatican Council reiterated, “Parents who have the primary and inalienable right and duty to educate their children must enjoy true liberty in their choice of schools. Consequently, the public power, which has the obligation to protect and defend the rights of citizens, must see to it, in its concern for distributive justice, that public subsidies are paid out in such a way that parents are truly free to choose according to their conscience in the schools they want for their children.”