Wednesday, February 23, 2000
Kroger chief donates $1M to Catholic schools
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Joseph Pichler, chairman and chief executive officer of Kroger Co., has donated $1 million to boost enrollment and fix buildings at eight inner-city Catholic schools.
Mr. Pichler and his wife, Susan, gave the money to the Catholic Inner-City Schools Education (CISE) Fund, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati said Tuesday. The money will allow the schools to expand enrollments and improve building maintenance at eight elementaries, archdiocesan officials said. The average age of the eight school buildings is 90 years old.
The schools are St. Boniface in Northside, Corryville Catholic, St. Francis de Sales
in Walnut Hills, St. Francis Seraph in Over-the-Rhine, Holy Family in East Price Hill, St. Joseph in the West End, St. Mark in Evanston and Resurrection in Price Hill.
Of 1,500 students enrolled in those schools this year, 70 percent are from families living on income below the federal poverty level and 69 percent are members of minority groups, according to the archdiocese. Sixty-five percent come from non-Catholic backgrounds.
The schools' capacity is 1,750 students, CISE Director Carol A. Stevie said.
The Catholic inner-city schools “enhance opportunities for self-determination by providing needy youngsters with a first-quality education. And they do so in an atmosphere of moral values, security and love,” Mr. Pichler wrote in a letter to Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk.
The Pichlers have been longtime supporters of Cincinnati's Catholic inner-city schools.
Mr. Pichler served in 1991 as chairman of the CISE corporate campaign. Mrs. Pichler volunteers at St. Francis Seraph School as a librarian and coordinator of the school's Junior Great Books program.
Architect Rick Tripp of Michael Schuster Associates has volunteered to do structural analyses if the eight schools help draft an improvement plan.
The eight schools this year received $750,000 for tuition aid and another $200,000 for operating needs from the CISE fund, Ms. Stevie said. The Zenon Hansen Foundation, a charity for needy children named for the former chairman of Mack Truck, also gave $220,000 for tuition aid for new students in those eight schools.
Other sources of support include tuition, parish donations and grants.
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