Catholic School?

In discussing marketing initiatives, we've learned that a larger than you'd think number of Jewish families send their kids to Catholic schools. Catholic sponsored schools are less expensive (they generally receive funds from the local Archdiocese) and in some cases, are fairly gentle in the fervor of their religious presentation. They are respectful to other cultures and religious traditions. The thought arose as to why these families were not attending Jewish private school and what we could do to attract them to our school.

We haven't come to any conclusions, but my own view is that these families probably are not a target audience for a Jewish day school. Jewish day schools probably cost 40% more, and if a Jewish family is prepared to send their child to a Catholic school, the "Jewish" part of our program is probably not something that is compelling to them. These families could have chosen to send their children to public school or a secular independent school but made a specific choice (motivated by perhaps financial concerns, since a secular independent school is much more costly than a Catholic school) to send their children to a non-Jewish religious school. That choice, in my view, speaks volumes about their beliefs about the importance of Jewish education.