Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools (BLOCS)

Pennsylvania businesses and individual taxpayers have participated in the eitc, ostc and pre-k tax credit programs offered by the state department of community and economic development (dced). The significant contributions and participation provided by these businesses and individuals allowed Blocs to award over 17,000 Catholic and private school scholarships to numerous counties in Pennsylvania for families in financial need. for this year, Blocs has worked with close to 200 businesses and over 1,700 individual taxpayers to take advantage of over $110 million in tax credits. However, the need for additional financial assistance remains significant as Blocs received over 30,000 applications and over $100 million dollars in qualified need. Blocs through the scholarship committee has established an emergency scholarship program which reviews emergency requests for financial assistance for families based on extenuating circumstances that greatly affect a family's income and ability to pay for education. for the current year, Blocs provided support of approximately $1.2 million for approximately 1,000 students. Blocs has also developed the urban endowment initiative to sustain targeted Schools in poor and low performing school district areas. Under this initiative, nine Schools work with Blocs to adopt successful practices in marketing and management. The Schools maintain an open enrollment policy and Blocs assists the Schools to help meet operational needs through endowment distributions. for the current year this support totaled approximately $1 million.