At Moreau Catholic High School, education is about transformation. Students are prepared through academic, social, and spiritual learning to become responsible global citizens.

With the second-lowest tuition among their twelve Catholic school peers and over 40% of families receiving tuition assistance, Moreau's commitment to access is clear.

But with resources already stretched, precision became essential. Every dollar had to reach families who truly needed it, or their mission itself would become unsustainable.

When Misaligned Awards Create an Unsustainable Path

Within her first weeks as Chief Financial & Operations Officer at Moreau Catholic High School, Cynthia Olavarría noticed a pattern: financial aid awards didn't match families' actual financial need.

"I started running across applications where families had received assistance that surprised me given their financial situation," Olavarría explained. "And this wasn't just one family, it was several."

"At the same time, appeals were coming in and I was looking at those applications thinking they should have been awarded significantly more."

The issue wasn't intentional, it was structural. 

"When you don't have the full financial picture, you can't make accurate decisions.”

“It might have been easier to say, 'we'll just give this family three thousand dollars because we know that will help them enroll,' and move on," she explained. “But when you multiply that across many families, the impact is substantial. Some receive a discount when they can pay more, while families who need assistance struggle with payments or tell us no.”

The stakes extended beyond individual families. Looking at the budget, Olavarría saw a troubling trend.

“A benchmark we look at is how much of gross tuition is being offered in financial assistance, and this year we actually tipped over our 20% threshold," she said. "That is not a sustainable place for a school to be.”

"For the health of the school, we needed to stop over-allocating families and start targeting financial assistance to where the need truly is.”

Gaining the Complete Financial Picture

The solution required seeing the full financial picture of their families, which was something Clarity’s automatic tax verification made possible. 

"We reached out to a family because we recognized business income on their tax transcript, which is something we never would have known in our previous system," Olavarría shared. "They may not have even considered that business income could affect their contribution."

The integration also eliminated the manual document chase that used to create delays and frustration.

“With Clarity, tax transcripts are automatically retrieved within days. It's more convenient for our families and gives us the financial data we need to make accurate decisions," she shared.  

“Clarity also knows when additional documentation is required and automatically requests it from the family," she said. “This helps ensure nothing critical gets missed even when we’re processing over five hundred applications.”

Confidence That Enables Strategic Decisions

Beyond operational improvements, complete financial data created something more fundamental for Moreau: confidence.

“With Clarity, we have confidence we're awarding families with the support they need to attend our school, and that kind of precision allows us to serve as many families as possible."

"I can also confidently tell our leadership and board that every aid dollar is going to families with genuine need, based on their complete financial picture. Having that confidence is invaluable.”

Carrying Forward a Legacy of Access

For Moreau, accurate financial aid allocation isn't just about efficiency, it's about sustaining their founding mission.

"Catholic schools were really formed to serve underrepresented and under-resourced populations of the time,” Olavarría explained. That history shapes Moreau’s reality today.

"We have the second-lowest tuition amongst our Catholic school peers. What our school does with a dollar is incredible, but if we don’t get our tuition assistance right, we can’t sustain that."

“Clarity has a lot to offer to Catholic schools. Because we keep tuition low to serve more families, every financial aid dollar needs to support genuine need. That’s why I knew Clarity was the right choice for our families.”