CNS STORY: Seven new Cristo Rey schools opening this fall; brings total to 19

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CRISTOREY-GROWTH Aug-24-2007 (890 words) With photos. xxxn

Seven new Cristo Rey schools opening this fall; brings total to 19

By Carol Zimmermann
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- While many Catholic schools in the nation's inner cities have been struggling to stay open due to declining enrollments and skyrocketing expenses, innovative efforts to revive Catholic high schools in these same neighborhoods are quietly gaining momentum.

Just this fall, seven new Cristo Rey schools are opening, bringing the national total to 19. The Catholic schools, which mean "Christ the King" in Spanish, serve low-income high school students from Los Angeles to New York.

They model Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, which opened in 1996 in a predominantly Hispanic Chicago neighborhood. Before it opened, the school's president, Jesuit Father John Foley, sought the advice of a management consultant on ways to make the school affordable.

Acting on this advice, school officials developed a work-study program where students could offset tuition costs and gain practical business experience by working entry-level jobs five days a month and attending school for extended days and school year.

The Chicago school opened with 80 sophomores and juniors in an old gym; today it has more than 525 students in two buildings. Five years after it opened, the Cristo Rey Network formed to replicate the Chicago school across the country.

To belong to the network, schools have to meet tough standards, including serving "only economically disadvantaged students" and making no exceptions to the work-study requirement. They also must be explicitly Catholic in mission and have church approval. Although initial Cristo Rey schools were sponsored by Jesuits, at least 13 religious orders have now committed to sponsoring them, providing staff members and financial support.

Salesian Father Steve Shafran, president of the new Don Bosco Cristo Rey School in suburban Washington, said a key part of the Cristo Rey schools is their affordability. "We know Catholic education works," he said, based on "hundreds of years of experience." The problem is that the cost of a Catholic education has "not made it accessible to some segments of the population."

Ninety-six percent of Cristo Rey graduates enrolled in a two- or four-year college program last year and the network's four-year dropout rate for the 2006 class was 2.6 percent compared to 30 percent nationwide.

Almost every year since the network was formed another school has been added. This year the seven new schools are in Baltimore; Birmingham, Ala.; Indianapolis; Minneapolis; Omaha, Neb.; Washington; and Newark, N.J.

In 2008, schools are set to open in Detroit, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Chicago. Feasibility studies are under way for the possibility of Cristo Rey schools in San Francisco and Houston.

Father Foley makes it a point to try to get to every school opening, which has kept him busy this year. But the current wave of success doesn't mean he didn't face initial skepticism or even his own concerns about the school's methods. He often recounts how anxious he was the first day the Chicago students went to their jobs. "I wanted to hide under a desk," he told Catholic News Service in an Aug. 10 telephone interview from his Chicago office.

His fears were relieved when he immediately started getting feedback from employers thanking him for the hardworking students -- a message that continues today with 93 percent of companies retaining students.

The corporations that contract the schools for student workers pay about $27,000 for each full-time-equivalent job, which covers nearly 70 percent of the tuition of the four students who share that job. Tuition is in the $2,500 range, depending on the location, and tuition assistance is available. More than 90 percent of students attending the Cristo Rey schools are minorities; the average student's family income is $33,000 for a family of four.

To further offset costs, the network relies on donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which gave the Cristo Rey Network a $6 million grant last year, adding to its previous investment of $9.9 million.

"It's amazing that the whole thing is spreading so fast in such a short period of time," Father Foley said, adding that "11 years ago it was just an idea."

Today, he said, 5,000 students are getting an education from a Cristo Rey school and the network's current "12 by 12 campaign" aims to have 12,000 students by 2012. The ultimate goal is college. "We measure our success not by the amount of kids," he said, "but by the amount going to college."

Violet Gudino, who graduated from Cristo Rey High School in Chicago in 2002, graduated last year from Marquette University in Milwaukee and is about to begin studies for a master's degree in integrated marketing communications at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

Gudino, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, is the first in her family to go to college. She said her family was key in encouraging her to pursue schooling because her mother always stressed that "education could never be taken from you."

In an Aug. 21 interview from Chicago, she said the school's work-study program enabled her to have a full resume before she even got to college and also exposed her to the line of work she wants as a career -- advertising.

The work experience was not typical for teenage jobs, she said, since it did not involve "stores or fast food." Rather, she said, "the work prepared us for what's out there."

END

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