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Cristo Rey school equips students with iPads and opportunity

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News

Published: October 21, 2014

Last year Columbus became home to one of 28 Cristo Rey private Catholic schools across the country.

For a short period, the school made its home in a temporary Franklinton building of barely 8,000 square feet.

Recently, however, the school held a garden party to celebrate the completion of renovations on their new, permanent location: the former Ohio State School for the Deaf on East Town Street.

The renovations have turned the 88,000-square-foot building into a state-of-the-art learning center with cutting edge chemistry and biology labs, Apple TV in every classroom, a technology lab filled with new PCs, and an iPad for every student.

The building is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making Columbus’ Cristo Rey chapter unique as far as high schools go.

“The chance to renovate one of Columbus’ oldest and most beautiful buildings for a school that makes such a positive impact on our community really motivated us to pursue this work,” said Brian Dew, president of Mid-City Electric which partnered with Corna Kokosing Construction to complete the project. “This was a distinctly exciting opportunity.”

The $18 million project was funded with tax credits and a loan from the Columbus diocese.

“This project restored one of our city’s historic gems,” said Dew of the building that previously sat empty for years. “We got to work with the rest of the construction team to update the facility for local students and preserve much of its original architectural beauty.”

But the setting is not the only thing that sets Cristo Rey apart.

“The first Cristo Rey school started in Chicago about 19 years ago,” said James Foley, president of Cristo Rey. “It was in a poor Hispanic neighborhood.”

The school caught the attention of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the couple donated $20 million to help replicate that specific type of institution across the country.

Cristo Rey is now part of a nationwide network of private high schools that follow a traditional college preparatory curriculum.

“As with a lot of private schools, we have developed some pretty high standards and demanding expectations of the students,” said Foley.

But private high schools offering college prep are pretty common. What makes Cristo Rey unique is that they focus only on underprivileged children.

“We limit our admissions based on economics,” said Foley. “If you can otherwise afford to go to a private school, then you would not be accepted into Cristo Rey.”

Tuition at Cristo Rey works on a scale that depends on a family’s ability to pay. Foley said that one family may pay $2,500 a year. A less fortunate family could pay $250.

“If you’re at all familiar with private school tuition, that’s just a small fraction of what folks are paying for private schools,” said Foley. “Our thrust is to help underserved families get a great college education. The focus is the work study program, that’s the secret sauce that makes this work.”

Cristo Rey’s work study program requires every student to work at an actual job for five full days a month.

The program works by dividing one full-time position at a company among four students. A quarter of the students will work Mondays, a quarter on Tuesdays and so on.

Fridays are rotated and the jobs range from positions at law firms to accounting firms to government agencies and hospitals.

“What that does is allow our students to really learn things at the workplace that you can’t learn in the classroom in terms of options that are open to them when they graduate,” said Foley. “They rub shoulders with professionals who have college and graduate degrees.”

“Understanding those professions and understanding that the way to get there is to go to college and, in many cases, go to graduate school after that, that’s important.”

The program also serves as funding when tuition is not enough.

Each job pays a salary of $26,500 and that money goes right back into the high school.

Foley also pointed out that all Cristo Rey schools are Catholic schools.

“But they are open to children of all faiths or no faith,” he said. “I would say our Catholic population is about 27 or 28 percent of the student body and the rest are non-Catholic, so it’s a very diverse student body religiously, ethnically and even geographically — we draw from all over town. It’s a pretty neat student body.”

Still, that is not all that makes Cristo Rey special. Across the entire Cristo Rey network for the last several years, not one student has graduated without a college offer.

“Every single kid, with no exception,” he said. “That’s really a sign of the success of the program.”

For now, the Columbus chapter’s school may seem a little empty. Instead of bringing in all four classes at once, the school chose to ease into its new surroundings, bringing in one freshman class of about 140 students last year.

This fall, a new freshman class began its education at Cristo Rey.

In two years, the inaugural class will receive its diplomas and, in keeping with the pattern, move on to college.

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