There’s one Catholic grade school in South Bend that stands to see its enrollment increase a whopping 40 percent this year, due to vouchers—and vouchers alone.

“Vouchers have definitely played a role in the boom of enrollment,” said Principal Melissa Jay of Our Lady of Hungary School on Calvert Street.

For the first time, the State of Indiana has offered public tax dollars to help pay the private school tuition of families that meet income guidelines.

Some 1,300 Indiana students have already been accepted into Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Program—and more than one third of them (479) will attend Catholic schools in the Fort Wayne South Bend Diocese.

Our Lady of Hungary School has filed more voucher applications than any other school in the South Bend area.

“I’ve applied for 52 vouchers so far and I just spoke to a family a little while ago and so my number should be 54 by the end of today,” said Principal Melissa Jay.

That means time and space appear to be tight for the staff at Our Lady with the school year scheduled to start on August 17th.

“We are scrambling to get enough desks to fit into classrooms and move furniture around to accommodate all the new bodies we're going to have around this year,” said Principal Jay. “Vouchers are allowing families who have previously might have a desire for a private education, but didn’t have the financial resources to be able to afford it.”

At Marian High School in Mishawaka, vouchers will bring a father and son closer together.

“I have a son who will be a Junior this year, he’ll be attending Marian High School, transferring from Washington High School (in South Bend)” said Gary McCallum, who works maintenance at Marian. “He son Aaron) actually wanted to come his sophomore year but it just wasn't financially feasible for him to come, and so it’s always been something he's wanted to do.”

At Marian, the voucher related bump in enrollment will likely fall in the five percent range.

“We thought we might have maybe ten or 12 (voucher applications) and we're at 32,” said Marian Principal Carl Loesch. “We’ve had none denied, we have 24 approved and 8 that are in process that should be approved over the weekend by the state.

Today, the diocese released its top South Bend area schools in terms of voucher volume. Our Lady of Hungary School leads the pack with 52, while St. Adalbert’s has submitted 43 voucher applications. St. John the Baptist School has submitted 25 voucher applications and St. Anthony School has submitted 21.

At Our Lady of Hungary School, most of the transfer students most recently attended South Bend public schools. “Most of them are from the South Bend, we have a few families traveling from Mishawaka to come here and the New Carlisle area, but the vast majority are South Bend residents,” said Melissa Jay.

The State of Indiana has yet to release district by district information on where the 1,300 transfer students are coming from, but it may do so as early as next week.

The State of Indiana continues to accept voucher applications.