Tough times are taking a toll on Catholic schools. There are increasing reports of school closings and consolidations in my own state, and now the Washington Post is taking a look at what’s happening in private schools around the country:

Cynthia Hogan pulled her daughter and son out of Catholic school when she started feeling the squeeze of a recession that had just begun.

“We just couldn’t keep writing the check. It was killing us,” said Hogan, who lives in San Francisco. “My husband just got laid off in October. Thank God we are where we are.”

Across the country, Lisa LeMieux had moved her 9-year-old daughter to a private school in their rural, central Florida community last year, taking on the $400 monthly tuition to provide her with a better education. It lasted half a year.

The mother of two from Oviedo, Fla., decided to switch Danielle back to public school in the fall after the tuition, rising health care costs and other expenses put too much stress on the family’s budget.

“This year, it would have been really difficult,” said LeMieux, whose husband owns a small contracting business.

This recession, the worst in a generation, is forcing painful decisions about private school. Parents are falling behind on tuition payments, and some are switching kids to public school now, in the middle of the school year, something they almost never do.

Karen Lockard, principal at Maryland’s Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, said several students left elite prep schools to transfer there this year.

“Traditionally, that’s not when parents move them _ that’s much more disruptive, to move them as 11th- or 12th-graders,” Lockard said. “It’s tough, because friendships are formed, and when you’re in private school, some of the requirements for graduation are not the same as public school. They come to school and have to make up credits that don’t transfer.”

About 7 percent of the families who pay tuition through New York-based Smart Tuition are dropping out midyear, double the usual number.

“It’s harder to collect tuition now than ever,” said chief executive Andrew Goldberger, whose company handles billing for about 2,000 private and religious schools.

More of the parents sticking with private schools are asking for financial aid, straining school endowments that withered with the stock market. The National Association of Independent Schools said 2,400 independent and parochial schools it worked with reported a 4.3 percent jump in the number of families applying for aid.

“Consumers are feeling much more pain,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight.

“You’re paying for private school, but you still have college costs stretching out beyond that,” he said.

College costs are no small matter, considering they are rising faster than the cost of health care, according to a recent study from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

That was a factor for Lisa Henderson, who moved her daughters from private school to Chevy Chase Elementary in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

“We have to start saving for college,” she said “Prices went up every year. It was going to be too hard. Plus, we had a great public school option.”

Continue at the link for more.

Meantime, on the same topic, the editorial page of the Detroit Free Press has some advice on education — and a plea — for the incoming bishop.