Mission Statement: The Children’s Scholarship Fund aims to ...



Round 2 Program-specific questions: Children’s Scholarship Fund EIN-13-4002189

I. Scholarship Recipients

A. Scholarship recipients added in past five years (by grade level)

|Year |K |1st |2nd |

|2003 |9.8 |37.25 |52.94 |

|2004 |10.24 |44.88 |43.31 |

|2005 |14.76 |35.68 |42.55 |

|2006 |13.28 |38.37 |41.35 |

|2007 |16.48 |38.55 |44.89 |

C., D., & E. Attendance, disciplinary records and proficiency in reading and math.

As discussed, CSF has not gathered this information from children entering the scholarship program.

II. Public Schools

A. List of public schools attended previously by scholarship recipients who entered CSF program in 2005, 2006, and 2007. (Attached Excel file)

Please note that significant numbers of children each year were entering Kindergarten (coming from Pre-K or daycare programs), so they are not included in this list. In addition, the previous schools of some recipients were not captured in our database.

B. Public school information.

As discussed, Clear Fund will access publicly available demographics and test score information on the NYC public schools.

III. Private Schools Attended by CSF Recipients

A. List of private schools new CSF scholarship recipients entered in 2005, 2006, and 2007. (Attached Excel file)

B. Enrollment Limits. Most of the private schools where we have recipients are not oversubscribed. In fact, most of them have available seats and minimal entrance requirements. Most of the Catholic schools require a registration fee and require students to be tested before they enter the school so they can be placed in the appropriate grade. Very few students are refused entry to the schools, although principals occasionally exercise their discretion and refuse to enroll children who may cause extreme discipline problems. In the few cases where schools do not have available seats (for example at a specific grade level), students are usually admitted on a first-come, first-served basis, and latecomers are referred to nearby schools with available spaces.

C. Private school information.

Grade and class size: CSF does not have grade and class size for all the private schools attended by recipients. The Domanico study referenced below found that NYC Catholic schools have an average student:teacher ratio of 21:1.

Ethnicity: In Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island Catholic schools, more than 93% of students are minorities, and 36% are non-Catholics. More than 63% of the Brooklyn and Queens Catholic school students are minorities, and more than 24% are non-Catholic.

Poverty level: 64% of students in the Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island Catholic schools are living at or below the federal poverty line. 60% come from single-parent households.

Outcomes for high school and college: For Brooklyn and Queens Catholic schools, 94% of the Class of 2005 went on to college. The high school graduation rate was more than 99%, compared to only 38.5% for NYC public schools.

Attendance: We do not have attendance rates for all students at the schools our recipients attend. However, we require CSF recipients to maintain a 90% or better attendance rate or their scholarship funding is withheld.

Test scores: A 2001 study by Raymond Domanico (hard copy attached) found that Catholic schools in New York averaged higher proficiency levels than similar public schools in New York. On 4th grade tests, New York Catholic school students averaged 9.8 points better than public school students in English. In math, Catholic schools students were 6.9 points higher than public schools. But in 8th grade, Catholic school students scored 17 points higher on the English exam, and 20 points higher in math than their public school counterparts. Also, the study found that Catholic schools with high concentrations of poor black and Hispanic students performed better than public schools with less poor and more white or Asian student populations.

A recent study conducted by the ECRA Group, a national educational research firm, found that students graduating 8th grade in 2007 from Brooklyn and Queens Catholic elementary schools scored higher in reading, language and mathematics than public school students. The study tracked nearly 3,000 students from 4th grade to their graduation in 8th grade. Highlights from the study include: 1) Above average 8th graders are reading at a level better than 82% of 8th graders nationwide – six percentile points higher than the same children’s reading level when they were in 4th grade; 2) Average students moved from reading better than 59% of the country in 4th grade to reading better than 66% of the country in 8th grade, and 3) Below average students moved from a reading level equal or better than 40% of the country in 4th grade to a reading lever better than 51% of students in 8th grade.

IV. Outcomes for Scholarship Recipients

CSF has done several in-house surveys of our recipients who have left the program following 8th grade graduation. Of 103 New York respondents to a survey we conducted last fall, 3 students were attending charter high schools, 64 were attending 35 private high schools, and 36 were attending 36 public high schools. The evaluations on past recipients that we have done were mostly conducted one or two years after 8th grade, so they have captured high school attendance information and college plans (most recipients tell us they plan to attend college), but we have not had the capacity to follow up with every child who has received a scholarship or to gather high school grades and test scores. Family mobility is a challenge in maintaining up-to-date contact information on former recipients.

The Minneapolis CSF program has tracked its first class of scholarship recipients who graduated from 8th grade with CSF scholarships in 2002. In 2006, 94% of those students graduated from high school on time – a rate much higher than the national average of 73%. In fact, 79% of the CSF students planned to enter college in September, 2006. And another 9% were enrolling in vocational or technical schools. The remaining 6% were undecided or entering the military.

V. Evidence of Impact

CSF has submitted the various studies that have been conducted on CSF partner programs nationwide during Round 1. However, we are attaching further information on the 2000 study, Test-Score Effects of School Vouchers in Dayton, NYC, and Washington DC, by Harvard professor Paul Peterson. Alan Krueger of Princeton’s paper Another Look at the New York City School Voucher Experiment, and Peterson’s response, Efficiency, Bias, and Classification Schemes: Estimating Private-School Impacts on Test Scores in the New York City Voucher Experiment are attached. The other studies we sent that use an experimental or quasi-experimental design are also attached again: Jay Greene’s Effect of School Choice: An Evaluation of the Charlotte CSF Program (2000) and Denise Quigley’s Baseline Findings for an Evaluation of CSF in Los Angeles (2006).

General Information about Children’s Scholarship Fund EIN-13-4002189

A. Mission Statement: The Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF) aims to maximize educational opportunity for children from low-income families by offering them partial tuition assistance to attend private and parochial schools.

B. Number of paid full-time staff: 10

Number of paid part-time staff: 1

Number of volunteers: 0

C. Organization’s relationships: CSF is the only organization in New York City that provides partial tuition assistance to low-income families who wish to send their children private and parochial schools of all kinds, including Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and independent elementary schools. CSF is also the only national organization to provide matching funds to similar elementary school tuition assistance programs nationwide. CSF-New York enjoys strong partnerships with the Endowment for Inner-City Education, the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, Futures in Education, the Archdiocese of New York, and the Diocese of Brooklyn. These organizations provide partial funding for the new scholarships we have awarded and administered since 2005, under the Cardinal’s Scholarship Program (for Catholics schools in Manhattan, Bronx, and Staten Island), and the Bishop’s Scholarship Program (for Catholics schools in Brooklyn and Queens). CSF also advises our 8th grade recipients of other organizations, such as Student Sponsor Partners, Prep for Prep, and Teak Fellowship, which provide assistance and mentoring for high school students. We also aim to foster relationships with the individual private schools our recipients choose (through school visits and phone contact with principals and school administrators).

II. Attachments

A. Audited Financial Statements for year ended August 31, 2006 – hard copy attached.

B. Organization-wide operating expense budgets for FY07 and FY08. Note: The FY07 budget is attached with this document. However, the FY08 is not yet finalized, because we are waiting for confirmation of recipient numbers for the new school year from some of our partner programs. We anticipate having the final FY08 organization-wide budget available early the week of October 15. The FY08 will be similar to the FY07 budget, but the scholarship disbursements will be significantly larger because of the new scholarships we have added this school year.

| | | | | |

|Children's Scholarship Fund | | | | |

|Statement of Estimated Cash Receipts and Disbursements | |

|For the year ended August 31, 2007 |  |  | |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

| | | | |Estimated Actual | |

|RECEIPTS | | |August 31, 2007 | |

| | | | | | |

|Contributions | | | $ 22,799,878 | |

|Investment & Other Income | | | 475,516 | |

| | | | | | |

|Total Receipts | | | $ 23,275,394 | |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

|DISBURSEMENTS | | | | |

| | | | | | |

|Scholarships | | | 21,092,149 |* |

|Program Support Grants | | | 491,076 | |

| |Total Scholarships & Grants | | 21,583,225 | |

| | | | | | |

|Salaries | | | 1,031,031 | |

|Payroll Taxes & Fringe Benefits | | 178,013 | |

|Professional Fees | | | 52,432 | |

|Research | | | 10,000 | |

|Event costs | | | 4,572 | |

|Occupancy costs | | | 207,456 | |

|Telephone | | | 22,958 | |

|Donor Communication costs | | | 24,666 | |

|Travel | | | 19,545 | |

|Insurance | | | 39,000 | |

|Office Equipment | | | 10,355 | |

|Office supplies | | | 12,256 | |

|Postage/Delivery | | | 26,406 | |

|Dues & subscriptions | | | 20,189 | |

|Printing | | | 12,983 | |

|Depreciation | | | 16,800 | |

|Miscellaneous | | | 6,791 | |

| |Total Administrative costs | | 1,695,453 | |

| | | | | | |

|Total Disbursements | | | 23,278,678 | |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

|Surplus (deficit) | | | $ (3,284) | |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

|* an additional $12.5 million of scholarships was funded by contributions to local | |

|programs for a total of $33.6 million in scholarship awards for the year ended | |

|August 31, 2007. | | | | |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

C. List of foundation and corporate supporters and all other sources of income, with amounts, for your current and most recent fiscal year (FY07 and FY08).

Please Note: FY07 donor information attached below. FY08 donor projections will be emailed by the end of the week.

|CSF Major Donors for NYC Scholarships FY07 |

| Donor |Amount |

|Alive in Hope Foundation |$484,358.92 |

|Alliance Capital Management Corp. |$1,000.00 |

|Elbell, Eric |$10,000.00 |

|Endowment for Inner-City Education |$2,262,983.00 |

|Forstmann Little & Company |$50,000.00 |

|Futures in Education |$484,358.93 |

|Granieri, Robert |$60,000.00 |

|HSBC in the Community USA Inc. Fdn. |$15,000.00 |

|Inner-City Scholarship Fund |$1,589,340.00 |

|Kempner, Thomas |$10,000.00 |

|Lauder Foundation |$50,000.00 |

|Leuschen, David |$50,000.00 |

|Louis Calder Foundation |$50,000.00 |

|Luongo, Peter |$2,000.00 |

|Mains, Robert |$10,000.00 |

|McQuade, Charles |$2,000.00 |

|Milberg, Justin |$10,000.00 |

|National Philanthropic Trust |$134,050.00 |

|O'Neil, Margaret |$3,900.00 |

|Proctor, David |$15,000.00 |

|Schenck, David |$5,000.00 |

|Serpe, William |$2,500.00 |

|Tiger Management |$10,000.00 |

|William E. Simon Foundation |$250,000.00 |

|All Others |$2,212.00 |

|  |  |

|TOTAL |$5,563,702.85 |

D. List of Board of Directors with affiliations:

Children’s Scholarship Fund Board of Directors

Theodore J. Forstmann, Chairman & CEO

Forstmann Little & Company

Tal Anderson

Chairman, Performance Automotive Group

Joseph A. Califano

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse

Columbia University

Stanley F. Druckenmiller

Duquesne Capital Management, L.L.C.

Stephen Fraidin

Partner, Kirkland & Ellis

Dr. Dorothy I. Height

National Council of Negro Women

Mike McCurry

Partner, Public Strategies Washington, Inc.

Michael Monahan

President, Monahan Enterprises, LLC

Noelle Nikpour

Ricercia and Associates

Arthur Rock

Principal, Arthur Rock & Company

Darla M. Romfo

President, Children’s Scholarship Fund

Brother John M. Walderman, CFC

Head of School, Rice High School

E. IRS letter – hard copy attached.

F. Short resumes of key staff.

Darla Romfo

President & Chief Operating Officer

Started: July 1999

Full-Time

Darla is responsible for the overall operation and performance of Children’s Scholarship Fund, including day-to-day decisions related to CSF’s program operation, budget, staffing, development, communications, external relations, and strategic planning. Prior to joining CSF, Darla was Legislative Director and Counsel to Senator John Breaux of Louisiana. In that position, she worked closely with the Senator in his capacity as a member of the Senate Democratic Leadership and as Chairman of the Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. She also worked closely with Senator Breaux on the National Commission on Retirement Policy and helped develop a comprehensive Social Security and Retirement Reform Bill. Previously, Darla worked for Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota as his Tax Counsel and Legislative Director. Before working on Capitol Hill, she was an attorney specializing in tax law. She graduated from the University of North Dakota, is a CPA, and received a law degree from George Washington University.

Thomas Finnerty

Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Started: October 1998

Full-Time

Tom is responsible for CSF’s overall fiscal planning and budget preparation, federal and state regulatory filings employee benefit plans, financial statements and the coordination of CSF’s annual independent audit. Prior to joining CSF, Tom was Vice President and Director of Finance for Phoenix House Foundation, one of the nation’s largest social services organizations providing drug rehabilitation, healthcare and educational services with more than 70 programs nationwide. Earlier, he was a partner Deloitte & Touche, an international professional services firm, where he specialized in providing services to not-for-profit and higher education organizations. Key client service responsibilities included Princeton University, The Institute for Advanced Study, the Consortium for Scientific Computing, and Montclair State University.

G. Annual report – Hard copies of newsletters attached in lieu of annual report.

III.

Confidentiality – We do not require any part of the application to be kept confidential.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download