The real issue behind legal fight waged by Jesuit High and prominent Sacramento family
Serving the poor is inherent in the Catholic faith. But poor students are too often priced out of obscenely expensive parochial schools like Jesuit High School in Carmichael, where the annual tuition is $15,040 per student and the campus is shaped by a culture of financial privilege.
This contradiction between faith and business within the church is at the root of a legal battle between Jesuit and a wealthy Catholic family that founded the Anderson Bros. pharmacies. In an exclusive story told by The Bee’s Sam Stanton, this fight is over a home valued at roughly $1.5 million that was donated to Jesuit by the descendants of the late Walter and Agnes Anderson.
The Andersons want the school to keep and use the five-bedroom, four-bath house in order to venerate a couple who were substantial financial patrons of Jesuit.
Jesuit says it has no practical use for the home and wants to sell it, using the proceeds to fund an endowment.
“This endowment would enable boys, who would otherwise not be able to afford the full cost of tuition, to attend Jesuit High School,” the Rev. John P. McGarry, president of the school, told Stanton.
The operative words here: “boys who would otherwise not be able to afford the full cost of tuition.”
That it costs an unholy amount of money to receive an elite college-preparatory education is a sensitive subject at Catholic schools because many Catholic and non-Catholic families have no chance to place their children at schools like Jesuit, just as McGarry says.
The annual tuition per student at co-ed Christian Brothers High School is $14, 550. The annual tuition at the all-girls St. Francis Catholic High School is $14,800 per student.
Many parochial schools offer some form of tuition assistance but, even more important, they rely on endowments so that they can make their schools more equitable and more available for the community.
These are the primary methods for Catholic school leaders to address the obvious contradiction between their mission to serve the poor and the exclusionary economics that make parochial schools unattainable to children from economically challenged families.
How strong is the desire to make Jesuit High School available to kids who can’t afford it? As Stanton reported, Jesuit sued a family — the Andersons — that they have extolled and appreciated for years.
“The Andersons were named as ‘North American Martyrs,’ the highest designation for donors to the school and one awarded to only six donors in the 2019 president’s report,” Stanton wrote.
In the 2018 school president’s report at Jesuit, the Andersons — particularly Agnes — received glowing praise: “Look around the campus on your next visit,” it read. “Not only will you see Agnes in the buildings and our beautiful grounds, you will see her spirit in all that we do. Thousands of boys have grown to become the men we want them to be because of the gifts Agnes gave with love.”
Yet there is Jesuit, locked in a legal battle with the descendants of Agnes Anderson because they know Jesuit could and should be available to more children who have the intelligence but whose families lack the legacy wealth of an Anderson family to send their kids to Jesuit.
Are parochial schools less expensive than secular private schools? For the most part, yes. But that clearly doesn’t give McGarry comfort nor should it. How a court ultimately decides Jesuit’s legal dispute with the Andersons remains to be seen.
But McGarry is not wrong for attempting to make a Jesuit education more available because it is a truly valuable commodity. Jesuit High School educated retired Brig. Gen. Leo A. Brooks Jr., federal judge Ryan T. Holte, baseball star Rhys Hoskins and many other notable people in their fields and leaders in the Sacramento community.
It’s a shame that Jesuit’s effort to widen the net of opportunity has led to a court battle with a family that has been dedicated to Jesuit’s mission. Lost in the emotion of deeply held positions on both sides and claims of “betrayal” on the part of some in the Anderson camp is an idea worth considering: Reconciliation.
We are taught in the Catholic faith that forgiveness and reconciliation are expressions of God. Being human, we often forget this. We’re all sinners and we can let our emotions obscure the good that can be done when we choose the teachings of faith over the trappings of faith.
