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Columbus group making plans for Cristo Rey High School
By Tim Puet
Catholic Times
More than 100 Columbus-area business, community and Diocese of Columbus leaders have begun an initiative which they hope will lead to establishment in the city of an innovative Catholic high school The school would be based on the Cristo Rey model, which is designed to prepare low-income students for college while giving them the opportunity to finance their education by becoming part of the business world.
The model has been a success in Chicago since the founding of the first Cristo Rey school there 13 years ago. It has spread to 18 other cities across the United States, including Cleveland, which has been a part of the Cristo Rey network since 2004. A Cristo Rey school is scheduled to open in Cincinnati next year.
More than 5,000 students attend the 22 Cristo Rey high schools now in existence. They pay for 70 percent of the cost of their education by taking part in a corporate internship program in which they work at entry-level corporate positions.
Steve Baine, chief strategy officer for Columbus-based Nationwide Insurance, is among the leaders of the Columbus Cristo Rey initiative and has been on the board of its parent program in Chicago almost continuously since its founding by the Jesuit order in 1996. He said that in Chicago, the corporate positions pay about $28,000 annually and are split among four students, allowing each to earn $7,000, which is credited toward school tuition.
Contributions from the students’ parents and from supporters of the Cristo Rey program pay for the rest.
“The Cristo Rey program got its start in the school district with the highest dropout rate in the city,” he said. “We had to work hard to recruit students for the first few years because they never imagined themselves going to college.
“In the early days, graduates of the school mostly went on to local community colleges, but gradually, they began setting their sights higher. This past year, the school’s three valedictorians went on to Notre Dame, Brown, and Georgetown. That gives an indication of the quality of students Cristo Rey produces.
“It’s turned out that the program isn’t so much about these young people earning money as it is showing them the culture of the workplace and what they can become. They get more respect at their jobs than anywhere else, and it really opens their eyes.”
Baine said most of the businesses in Chicago that work with Cristo Rey students are law firms, hospitals, banks, and private equity investment firms. “To them, the jobs they provide aren’t donations that are considered as operating losses, but are cost-effective ways of improving their bottom line, because the students do needed work. That makes the program a very practical business tool at the same time it benefits the community,” he said.
Statistics from the Chicago school show that 99 percent of its graduating seniors have been accepted to college in the past seven years, while 86 percent of its alumni have graduated from college or are pursuing college degrees. They come from an area where fewer than 9 percent of adult residents have a college degree.
Baine said he began looking into the possibility of a Cristo Rey school in Columbus at the request of a Nationwide colleague, David Colina, who is from Cincinnati and learned of his work with the Chicago school. They and others helped put together a core group of central Ohio businessmen and women, most of them in their 20s and 30s, who have begun an organizing effort for the school.
The group is sponsoring a fund-raising event from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, May 7, at Huntington Park, the new home of the Columbus Clippers. It hopes to attract about 200 people in an effort to raise $100,000 to conduct a yearlong feasibility study, the first step in the process of establishing a Cristo Rey school, and to finance the initial costs of opening the school by 2011.
“Columbus has made progress in improving the lives of underserved urban young people, but significant opportunity for improvement remains,” said a document from the group. It said 70 percent of economically disadvantaged students in the area will graduate from high school, but only one-third of those will go on to college and one-seventh will earn a bachelor’s degree; that is, three percent of the total number of low-income students.
“Private school trends offer more promise, but tuition is out of reach for many students,” the group said.
The project has the support of Bishop Frederick Campbell and diocesan schools Superintendent Lucia McQuaide.
Bishop Campbell said he was familiar with the Cristo Rey model because there is such a school in Minneapolis, where he was auxiliary bishop before coming to Columbus.
“The possibility of such a Catholic school in the city of Columbus aligns with my mission to revitalize neighborhoods in the city,” he said in a letter to the national Cristo Rey network.
“Our regional high schools currently serve schools from the suburbs. The availability of Ed Choice scholarships in the state of Ohio has provided a way for some low-income students to attend our high schools. A Cristo Rey high school in the city would provide a needed additional choice for parents.”
“The Cristo Rey model fills a void that currently exists in our system of Catholic schools in Columbus,” McQuaide said. “The visits I made to Cristo Rey schools in Cleveland and Chicago gave evidence to the vitality and visibility of the model.”
Tickets to the fund-raising event are limited and may be purchased by contacting McQuaide at (614) 221-5829 or cmcquaid@cdeducation.org.
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