This year Cristo Rey High School in East Harlem will graduate all 50 of its seniors, all from families near or below the poverty level. All will sift through multiple offers from college. And — here’s the kicker — all of them have worked to pay their way through high school!
Can anything be more inspiring? Or more American?
Begun in 1996, the Cristo Rey Network has grown to 24 high schools teaching some 6,000 students in mostly large cities throughout the U.S. The Cristo Rey high schools are private schools: they take no public money. Instead, the students themselves help fund the school.
In essence, they are paying their way through high school!
Every student at a Cristo Rey high school works full-time one day a week with a local private company or non-profit. These are real entry-level jobs, not make-work, for which the companies pay student teams as much as $30,000, depending on the city. The money earned goes straight into their school’s annual budget. The participating employers have a Cristo Rey student on the job every day throughout the week as the student teams rotate their schedules. The students’ earnings contribute 65% of a school’s budget and help keep the tuition low — about $2,350. As a former president of the Network noted, “Our students are by far and away our biggest donor.”
And the companies who hire these students? They include: Black & Decker, Legg Mason, Prudential, Skadden Arps, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Co., Iron Mountain, Citadel Investment, R.R. Donnelley, Baker Hostetler, the Cleveland Indians, Pitney Bowes, Grant Thornton, Wells Fargo, Eli Lilly, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Sullivan & Cromwell, Xerox. . . . .
Of course, this means the students have to do five days of school work in four days. Somehow they manage. Could it be that the sense of purpose, self-reliance, and confidence they gain from the program figures into the success the students are having academically?
Reflect on some of the character-building lessons Cristo Rey high schools are providing its students: real world experience; concrete connections between school and their future; the connection between hard work and self-reliance; an understanding of their worth in society; a belief in their ability to be self-reliant and real contributors in society; an understanding of their own worth in society; a healthy respect for earning one’s place in society and the satisfaction that they are able to do this; team-building and being a part of something great and innovative; and having purpose each and every day.
Does this story make you wonder whether we as a nation are too focused on separation of Church and State and not focused enough on separation of Socialism and State? Or is it just me?
The Network involves contributions of 29 Catholic orders and communities. Visit them at http://www.cristoreynetwork.org/
[Thanks to Daniel Henninger, who brought attention to this marvelous program in his WSJ article of May 20. NRIE’s June 2010 Newsletter featured this story of the remarkable achievements at 24 Catholic schools where disadvantaged students are headed to college - after having helped pay their own way through high school.]