St. Cloud Catholic Schools to STRIDE Families: Consider Us for Next School Year

ST. CLOUD - The Catholic Community School System in St. Cloud has reached out to the families at STRIDE Academy who might be in need of a new school next year.

Linda Kaiser is the head of the Catholic Education Ministries Office. She says they've already brought a flyer over to STRIDE listing all of the different Catholic schools with their contact information. She says they've also given a presentation to the 8th grade students, which is something they do every year.

Kaiser says, while there is a fee to attend a Catholic school, financial help is available.

There are scholarships available at all of our schools, you just need to apply.  Even the Diocese has a scholarship that helps elementary students.  So there is funds for families at our Catholic schools whether it be grade school or high school.

Kaiser says the average cost for an elementary student is $2,000 to $2,800 a year.

The new Catholic Community Schools System has seven elementary schools at eight sites, along with Cathedral junior high and high school.  Kaiser says the time is now to consider one of their schools.

If you  have a certain school in mind you might have to be a little careful, because that class might be full.  So it's important to make decisions soon.  But also look at the different sites, all of them have a little different flavor, so look at the site that best suits your child.

Meanwhile, for any of the teachers at STRIDE that might be losing their jobs, Kaiser says they may have openings for them too.

A lot of their teachers are former Catholic school teachers, so we feel very sad for them. We know this is a scary time for them.  We do have possibly a couple openings coming up, they just need to watch the Diocesan website, or pay attention to the parish bulletins.

The STRIDE Academy school board announced earlier this month that they will be forced to close at the end of this school year. However, they're still hopeful a new authorizer will be allowed to keep them open. STRIDE has about 680 students.