Province News

Chicago's Cristo Rey High School Looked at as Model
Friday, March 23, 2001

Fr. Tom Cwik, SJ, of Denver, Bill Ford, of New York, and Todd Austin, of Austin, TX, share ideas this spring at the Cristo Rey Network Conference, which was held at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago, IL.
The unlikely pairing of Jesuit educators and a California venture capitalist could result in the creation of a high school that is unique in Cleveland, Ohio. This high school would let poor children pay for most of their tuition by working at outside jobs. Backers of this project expect to commission a study of the jobs-for-tuition school, which would be modeled after the successful Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in the Pilsen-Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. Jeff Theilman of the Cassin Educational Initiatives Foundation, which was started by venture capitalist B J Cassin to replicate Cristo Rey in other cities, thinks that Cleveland is an ideal city for this kind of a project.

Cristo Rey, which serves mostly poor, Mexican-American boys and girls in an area with high unemployment and staggering dropout rates, has drawn national attention. It provides an excellent preparatory school education for youngsters of limited means. Now in its fifth year, the Jesuit-sponsored Cristo Rey has gained a reputation for high academic achievement, an innovative curriculum, and for sending more than 75 percent of its graduates to college.

However, what makes the school unique is the way in which it supports itself. Students attend school four days a week. About once a week or five times a month, they work at a corporation or other business, sharing a single "corporate internship." It is the cooperation with these businesses, which commit themselves to financing one position that is shared among several students, that makes the system work.

Fr. John Foley, SJ, President of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School shares some of the knowledge and insight he gleaned while working to build Cristo Rey Jesuit High School from the ground up.

Employers work directly with the school. It allows companies to have a sense of civic responsibility and know that their contributions are well spent. At Cristo Rey this year, for example, employers paid about $6,900 of a student's $9,100 tuition. Parents are asked to pay the other $2,200 -- less than half of what they would pay at most other Chicago-area Catholic high schools.

The principal of St Ignatius High School Cleveland, Richard Clark, notes that "the issues that usually surface when you talk about starting a school for the poor or inner-city kids just disappear with this model." In a sense, each child brings in more than $6,000 before they pay any tuition.

For years Clark has been friends with Cristo Rey's president, Fr John Foley SJ, and is serving as the local point man to bring such a school to the Cleveland area. Clark has met with a number of people to float the idea of establishing a Cristo Rey-style school. One Cleveland City Councilman, Mr Nelson Cintron, noted: "I am committed to public education, but any help we can get is a win-win situation." [Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mark McCarthy]