St. Ann’s School in Lansing Offers New Scholarship Program

St. Ann’s School in Lansing Offers New Scholarship Program

By: Katerine Newman

St. Ann’s Catholic School in Lansing recently held an open house for new families to meet the teachers, see classrooms, and learn about the new

Illinois Invest in Kids Act scholarship program that can be used to help with tuition costs.

“We were trying to grab some new families to [come to] St. Ann’s School and provide information on the Invest in Kids Act, which has been passed through the state of Illinois, offering eligible families a tax credit scholarship,” said Kelly Rojas, Principal of St. Ann’s School.

This program offers a 75 percent income tax credit to individuals and businesses that contribute to qualified Scholarship Granting Organizations

(SGOs). The SGOs then provide scholarships for students whose families meet the income requirements to attend qualified, non-public schools in

Illinois, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue website.

“Right now corporations are actually putting money forward, that started on Dec. 1. So the money is starting to come in,” said Rojas. “There

are 5 SGOs right now. Two of them are helping the Catholic Schools, the one that would actually affect St. Ann’s School is Empower Illinois.”

Because the program is new the available information has been changing and growing almost daily, according to Rojas. The school is providing information to families as they receive it and encouraging them to utilize the internet as a way to keep up with the developing program.

“We are feeding the information to our current families as it comes in. We sent out a flyer to our religious education program as well as people who had come to St. Ann’s last year but we didn't give them enough money to be able to afford it,” said Janice Summerise, School Business Manager at St. Ann’s. “We reached out to those people so those are the persons that we had coming through [the open house].”

The school is hoping through the Invest in Kids act they will be able to gradually increase enrollment, according to Summerrise.

It is still unclear exactly how much money will be available or how many students will have access to scholarship funds, but Rojas is not concerned

with there not being enough money to satisfy their needs.

“As to how many people are going to get the scholarship, we really don't know,” said Summerrise.

“We are encouraging all of our families who either got a scholarship this year or got financial aid from us to apply for this scholarship.”

For more information on the SGO providing scholarships for St. Ann’s visit empowerillinois. org. For information on donating visit tax.illinois.

gov/investinkids.

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