Poughkeepsie Plan

The Poughkeepsie Plan was an imaginative educational collaboration between Catholic parishes and local public schools to educate Catholic children at little or no cost to their parents or the parishes. Although named for the city of Poughkeepsie in New York, the Plan was manifested in several different forms in a number of states. It also must be said that the Plan generated the most controversy and educated the fewest students of any of the many efforts to educate Catholic children in the United States.

From 1831 to 1916, Catholics in at least 21 communities in 14 states attempted to bridge the gap between parochial and public education. Although the specific terms of these agreements varied slightly from community to community, the most common plan called for school boards to lease school buildings from local parishes for [Page 718]nominal sums and pay the salaries of teachers who taught in those schools. The teachers were selected jointly by school boards and parish pastors. The board regulated the curriculum, selected the school-books, and conducted periodic examinations, but parish pastors had the right to ensure that all of the elements of the curriculum were acceptable to the Catholic Church. Most important, however, was the fact that the school day at these publicly supported Catholic schools was the same as at any other public school. No religious instruction was conducted until after classes were dismissed.

These schools were experimental and in most communities the experiment was short-lived. But in three communities—Lowell, Massachusetts, from 1831 to 1852; Savannah, Georgia, from 1870 to 1916; and Poughkeepsie, New York, from 1873 to 1898—publicly supported parochial schools educated several generations of Catholic children. Even though the number of Catholic children educated in these schools was small, the publicly supported Catholic school was an important grassroots effort to resolve the outstanding differences that separated many Catholics from public education.

The publicly supported parish school in Poughkeepsie is worthy of closer attention not only because of its longevity, but also because it received national attention as the representative example of cooperative education efforts in other communities.

The “Poughkeepsie Plan,” as the cooperative effort came to be known, began when the pastor of a parish in Poughkeepsie informed the local school board in the spring of 1873 that his parishioners could no longer afford to maintain the parish's two schools. Starting in the fall, the 800 children who had attended those two schools would enter the public school system.

But the pastor not only precipitated the problem, he also had a solution. He proposed that the school board lease his parish buildings to conduct public school classes for the parish children. Religious instruction would not be part of the public school curriculum, but would be conducted in the building after normal school hours. Participation in religious exercises would be completely voluntary for all students.

The new public schools were to be staffed by teachers selected, employed, and paid by the board. But the pastor made it clear that the board should hire Catholic teachers for the schools so long as they met school board requirements. The board agreed to the terms and further agreed that the parish school would retain unrestricted use of the building outside of regular school hours. A lease agreement was signed on August 21, 1873.

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