Long gone are the days of the knuckle-knocking nuns, and yet, many students in Louisiana — regardless of their traditions or values — have attended a Catholic school at some point in their lives.
The conversation on religious-specific schools was renewed when President Barack Obama spoke in Northern Ireland last week about the religious division between Catholics and Protestants.
While many religious publications twisted Obama’s words, his underlying message of tolerance transported me back to my time at Catholic schools.
So where does division come to play in the equation at home?
The economic division arose when families with money were able to escape the failing public schools, which led them straight into the havens of private schools.
During the 2009-2010 fiscal year, 61.5 percent of students in Jefferson Parish public schools graduated, according to Nola.com.
While that percentage increased by 8.9 percent during the 2011-2012 school year, these improvements remain a stark contrast in comparison to the graduation rate — and college acceptance rate — at private schools, which are both estimated at nearly 100 percent.
As the city’s middle class families — who were the backbone of the public school system — left the public schools, the schools lost community support as well as diversity as children attended various schools around the city as opposed to the singular local public school.
Schools are often a common denominator in communities, but if residents do not support the local school, much of that cohesion is lost.
But when personally faced with an inadequate public school in my district, I chose to attend a private high school in 2004.
As a non-Catholic, however, I learned that my choices were actually limited The Crescent City’s secular private schools tend to be prohibitively expensive and are almost never an option for the average middle class family. So I had two options: return to the public school system or enroll in a Catholic school.
Jesuit High School, a Catholic all-boys school, compiled an online list of the names and tuition costs of several prestigious private and Catholic high schools in the area. For the 2012-2013 year, the cost for tuition and fees at secular private schools included Isidore Newman at $20,808, Louise S. McGehee School at $18,930 and Metairie Park Country Day at $18,365.
In comparison, Jesuit’s tuition totaled $7,700, which is similar to the cost of the area’s other Catholic high schools.
But before you begin praising the Catholic schools, let me stop you there.
In 2009, only 39 percent of residents within the Archdiocese of New Orleans were practicing Catholics, according to catholic-hierarchy.org.
In the search for a valuable – yet affordable – education, many non-Catholic students in New Orleans are forced to surrender their values in order to receive proper schooling.
I was one of those, and for five years, I sat through lectures that secretly made me uneasy.
When learning about heresies, teachers often called on me to tell the class about my faith – which was then fervently denounced.
However, the necessity of Catholic schools may soon be over.
In 2010, the Times-Picayune reported that New Orleans Catholic schools received a 5 percent decrease in enrollment between 2007 and 2010, and a similar trend was being experienced throughout the nation, including the archdioceses of New York and Baltimore, Md.
The introduction of magnet and charter schools may be one reason for the decrease in enrollment on a local level. In 2011, Newsweek ranked Orleans Parish’s Benjamin Franklin High School as the nation’s 27th best public high school.
Additionally, Jefferson Parish’s Haynes Academy for Advanced Studies was ranked as the state’s second best and the nation’s 137th best public school, according to U.S. News and World Report.
When adequate public schooling becomes available, non-Catholics — possibly even a substantial percentage of Catholics as well — will likely embrace these magnet and charter schools over the traditional Catholic schools.  
I applaud the headway these magnet schools have begun to make. And when the majority of children from the community attend the same school, it will bring racial, economic and religious diversity to the classroom.
Kate Mabry is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from New Orleans.