Officials from St. Hubert High School and St. Matthew and Blessed Trinity elementary schools attended a meeting of the Mayfair Business Association to ask merchants to consider making donations to scholarship organizations.
Business owners can receive tax credits for donating money that will go toward tuition payments for students who attend private schools.
The two state programs are the Educational Improvement Tax Credit and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit.
Bill O’Brien, executive director of Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools, said annual family income limits can be as high as $120,000, although most of the money goes to families making less than $50,000.
Tuition at Archdiocese of Philadelphia high schools will rise to $6,150 next year.
St. Hubert is finishing its first school year after almost closing last June.
“We’re doing great, I’m happy to report,” Robin Nolan, the school’s director of institutional advancement, said at the business group meeting last month.
Still, Nolan said the scholarship donations are needed to keep the school a neighborhood anchor at Torresdale and Cottman avenues.
St. Matthew was represented at the meeting by its pastor, the Rev. Charles McGroarty; its principal, Sister Kathleen Touey; school advancement director Barb Gress; and Michael Donahue, head of Friends of St. Matthew.
Donahue said the parish, specifically Gress, will help fill out the applications for any businesses that don’t understand the process.
“We’ll make it work,” he said.
Mike Gondos, director of advancement at Blessed Trinity, said enrollment is 607. The school is housed at the St. Timothy Parish campus and welcomes students from four other parishes.
Parents often call Gondos about the state scholarship opportunities.
“It is a great program. It does help our students,” he said.
For more information, go to blocs.org
In other news from the April 17 meeting:
• A farmers market co-sponsored by Republic Bank and the Mayfair Community Development Corporation made its season debut on April 21.
The market, at Frankford and Ryan avenues, will return on the following Sundays: June 2 and 23, July 14 and 28, Aug. 11 and 25, Sept. 8 and 22 and Oct. 6 and 20. Hours of operation are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., rain or shine.
Local musician Matt Roach provides entertainment.
One Frankford Avenue merchant complained that the market could hurt existing stores, but most business owners believe it will attract customers who don’t normally shop on the avenue. ••
Reporter Tom Waring can be reached at 215–354–3034 or [email protected]
