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Holy Family Cristo Rey
Cornerstone Schools of Alabama
Spring Valley School
Birmingham Southern's master's program

By Carla Jean Whitley Working isn’t new to Travell Christian. Although he’s only a high school junior, he’s held several jobs already.

But working in a corporate environment was, until he enrolled at Holy Family Cristo Rey High School in Ensley. Now Christian balances four days of class time with one working day each week—and in the process, he’s earning 70 percent of his tuition to the private Catholic school.

Holy Family faced several financial battles in the years just prior to its joining the Cristo Rey network. In 2004, the community raised funds to keep the school open, but school officials knew that wasn’t a long-term solution. That’s why, the following year, they began to explore joining the Cristo Rey network.

The Cristo Rey, or Christ the King, network includes 19 Catholic high schools throughout the nation. Each offers a college preparatory curriculum while also requiring students to participate in a work study program, offsetting the cost of tuition for students, who come predominantly from low-income families. Holy Family is the only Cristo Rey school in the Southeast, and one of only three conversion schools.

Getting in
Most new Cristo Rey schools begin with a class of freshmen, with the schools growing each year as students advance. Because Holy Family was a conversion school, it kept its previous students. Both students and their parents were interviewed before the program’s inaugural school year began in fall 2007. The students must want to be there, explains Corporate Internship Program Director Jan Fuller.

After their acceptance, new students attend several weeks of training before classes begin. In work-ready attire, these 14 and 15 year olds learn business and dining etiquette, time management, telephone skills and other lessons they’ll apply in an office environment.

Holy Family’s students are held to a higher standard than most high school age kids. During summer training, they dress in shirts and ties, skirts and dresses, and are monitored for trouble makers and potential leaders. But students are not without support. “We do a lot of mothering. We do a lot of mentoring. We do a lot of screaming,” Fuller says with a laugh. “We do a lot of yelling. We do a lot of consoling. It’s a full gamut.”

How it works
Four days a week, a Holy Family student’s life is much as it was before joining Cristo Rey. The school already taught a college preparatory curriculum. Students not only attended college; some of them earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships. The Cristo Rey program continues building on that success.

“Academically, Cristo Rey college prep should really just be a great enhancement to what’s already in place,” Fuller says. But the difference is obvious at least one day weekly, when students work instead of study. On their work days, students report to school by 7:30 a.m. before boarding a school-provided bus bound for their office.

Four students share one position at a company, creating the equivalent of a fulltime office worker. Each child works one day a week, and they rotate Mondays. Their duties are largely administrative in offices across the city—law firms, banks, hospitals and others. Teachers use time without students for study hall or planning. “The children usually grasp it a lot quicker than we do,” Fuller says.

Some teachers also incorporate the students’ employment into their classwork. Seniors prepared PowerPoint presentations about their jobs for their English class, for example. But that’s not the only way the school has seen the students’ jobs affect them. “There is a big change in a lot of our students,” says LaTanya Lee, assistant director of the Corporate Internship Program. Even one year in, Lee and Fuller have seen quiet students learn to be more assertive.

Working for the future
School staff hopes the students will see a long-term difference in their lives, something that goes beyond high school. “It just gives them a sense of accomplishment,” Lee says. “You stay focused that way because you have goals. You have time management skills built into your every day routine, which is something we don’t usually get into until well into adulthood.”

Christian is hoping to use those skills as he continues to take steps toward his longterm goals. His dream is to become a mortician, a career he recognized as valuable after his grandfather’s death. Now, he’s seeing first hand how a business is run.

Someday he may put that knowledge to use as he runs his own.

Holy Family Cristo Rey High School

2001 19th St., Ensley
787-9937
holyfamilycristorey.org

Enrollment: 165, grades 9 through 12
Tuition: Students earn 70 percent of their tuition through the workstudy
program, leaving families to pay the difference per child.
Tuition assistance is available for qualified families.
Income cap: $60,000 per household
  • The Cristo Rey network targets urban students who live in neighborhoods with limited educational options.
  • The network was founded in 2001 as groups from several cities aimed to emulate Cristo Rey Jesuit High School of Chicago.
  • 98 percent of 2007 Cristo Rey network graduates enrolled in college during fall 2007.
  • 99 percent of Holy Family students are African-American.
  • Only 8 percent of the 2007-2008 student body identified themselves as Catholic; the remaining 92 percent were Christian but not Catholic.
  • The school awarded $54,000 of financial aid last year to 31 percent of the student body.
—Statistics from the Cristo Rey Network’s 2007-2008 statistical directory. Corporate internship program director Jan Fuller and Holy Family President Father Alex Steinmiller.

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January Birmingham, Alabama

  

 
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