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After 30 years serving Catholic schools primarily in central Tennessee through tuition assistance, recent legal changes at the state level now allow the Advancement of Catholic Education (ACE) Endowment Fund to help schools to improve buildings and infrastructure.
In January, the Tennessee House and Senate passed the Education Freedom Act, as CatholicVote previously reported. The law makes families across Tennessee eligible for Education Freedom Scholarships worth approximately $7,295 each year per child, which can be used at schools across the state, including Catholic schools. According to Nashville Catholic, approximately 1,571 of the 20,000 available statewide scholarships were awarded to students attending Catholic schools in the Diocese of Nashville.
“EFS has enabled more students to have a sustainable access to Catholic education and schools were able to utilize their ACE monies for other things, such as capital improvements,” said Shana DeSouza Druffner, superintendent of Catholic schools in the diocese. “One of the things we want to do is make the schools places of great beauty and goodness so the students can be led to Truth. Having a well-maintained, beautiful learning environment aids in the formation of students and positively contributes to the well-being of our faculty and staff.”
Schools receiving funding from ACE are now able to use the money for projects that might otherwise have taken years to fund. St. Patrick School in McEwen will soon install a new HVAC system thanks to ACE, and the administration also intends to construct a foot path between the school and the nearby church.
“For years, we focused on tuition assistance because that was the greatest need in order for families who wanted a Catholic education to be able to receive it,” Marty Blair, ACE Board member, said, according to Nashville Catholic. “But ACE has always been available for more than that since its establishment in 1992.”
While ACE has long used the bulk of its money to provide tuition assistance at Catholic schools, it has always worked in five areas: tuition assistance, operational costs, school building improvements, development for teachers and administrators, and the construction of new schools. However, a new law has freed up much of ACE’s funding.
Sister Anna Ruth Wilson, St. Patrick School’s principal, explained that the improvements sponsored by ACE will help the school to better achieve its mission.
“We are a people devoted to truth, beauty, and goodness,” she said, according to Nashville Catholic, “so the physical spaces should reflect that as well.”
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