In reply to Donncha.

Oh, for the sake of saying, I don't equate Catholic/private schools in the state with weathly. The Catholic high school my wife worked at focused on a lower socioeconomic bracket—many kids who parents ever graduated high school and don't speak English. The kids had an internship program where they worked at local offices (think law offices, hospital administration) to get experience in a professional environment and the companies paid the school to partly offset the tuition.

The only public money was a Federal grant that, basically, paid for parent education programming (citizenship classes, English as a Second Language courses), and some after school programs for the kids. The current building is a "loaner" from an unaffiliated parish and lacks hot water. It's accredited by all the right departments, just chugging along finding money where they can :).