Earning Their Keep

A new breed of urban Catholic high school asks disadvantaged kids to work for their tuition.

Laura Vanderkam | August/September 2008

Almost every weekday, 14-year-old Tiffany Adams rises before 6 a.m. in the Newark, New Jersey, home she shares with her grandmother and sisters. She dons her school uniform and catches two New Jersey Transit buses across the city, arriving at Christ the King Preparatory School, a Catholic high school that opened in September 2007, at 8. Most days she goes to the standard ninth-grade classes: algebra, Spanish, Western Civ. By all accounts, she excels at them. She is ranked first in her class. Her favorite subject is math, she says, “because it challenges me.”

But five school days a month, Adams skips the uniform and dons business attire. On those days, after a morning assembly, she bypasses the classrooms and hops instead into a van bound for Essex County College. There Adams works in the human resources department from 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. or so, scheduling résumé appointments, doing clerical work, and generally keeping the place functioning. Far from being a distraction, this opportunity to work while going to school is what drew Adams to Christ the King in the first place. “I thought it would be a good school for me to learn about business,” she says. “I would like to be an entrepreneur.”

Read Complete Article

Newark school teaches value of workplace etiquette

Thursday, July 10, 2008

BY JEFF DIAMANT
Star-Ledger Staff

Answer office phones clearly. Learn the dress code. Iron tomorrow's clothes tonight. And for crying out loud, take a shower before work.

"You don't want anyone to get next to you and move away from you," instructed Flora Baldwin, a teacher at Christ the King Preparatory School in Newark, to 30 teen students this week. "Your sweat smells good to nobody but you."

Workplace etiquette is high on the summer curriculum for Baldwin's charges, a classroom of 13- and 14-year-olds who need to master the civilities quickly for part-time jobs that will start in the fall and help pay their Catholic school tuition.

Christ the King is part of a national network of 19 urban schools that has won accolades for its unorthodox approach: One day a week, students leave the classroom to do clerical work for a company that pays the school for their labor.

The idea is that by handling a job in the workplace, a young teen becomes more mature, less likely to drop out of school, and better prepared for college. And the salaries lower the tuition in an environment where many parents struggle to afford a Catholic school.

The challenge Christ the King faces is in persuading enough local companies to sign on, for $25,000 a year, to "hire" four different students for a day each week.

The school, which opened last fall on Woodside Avenue with just a freshman class of 100 students, needs to have jobs in September for a freshman and a sophomore class of 200 students.

So far, the school has commitments from about 40 companies, including most of the 25 that participated last year. These include the law firms Kirkpatrick & Lockart, and Gibbons; the Archdiocese of Newark; The Star-Ledger, and Broadway House Continuing Care.

Everyone interviewed for this story praised the student workers.

"We've thoroughly enjoyed working with the school and with the four students we had for the entire year," said James Gonzales, who runs Broadway House Continuing Care, which will participate for a second straight year. "They are more mature than some of the college interns we've seen in the past, in that they're capable of working with a wide variety of staff, and very mature, intelligent and well-spoken. They take their work very seriously."

Raymond Ocasio, who heads La Casa de Don Pedro, a social services agency in Newark, also was enthusiastic about the students his company sponsored last year. But he said the tough economy means his company probably won't be able to afford participating in 2008-2009.

"It's something in doubt, because of our budget situation," he said, citing increased costs and uncertainties involving grants. "The dollars that we used to hire these children are being jeopardized. ... We have to take care of the core business first."

If the school fails to get 50 companies, one option is to have a private corporation or foundation fund student jobs at nonprofit organizations. That's what happened last year when Public Service Electric & Gas funded four jobs for Christ the King students at the Newark Museum.

It's not just access to office jobs that parents like about Christ the King. The Cristo Rey (Spanish for "Christ the King") network has won attention for its low drop-out rates and affordability. Christ the King in Newark charges just $2,500 a year for tuition, and the vast majority of its students receive scholarships.

"I love the school," said Doretha Boswell of Newark, who sent her 14-year-old son Frank there last year. "It gives excellent opportunities for young children to experience the business world and to know that there is life outside what people say is the ghetto."

People who know Frank Boswell saw him take a serious turn last fall when, as a freshman at Christ the King, he did clerical work for AAK Inc., a Swedish vegetable oil company in Port Newark.

"Going into a work environment changed how I act in front of people," the teenager said. "It was a good experience for me."

Jeff Diamant may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or (973) 392-1547.

© 2008 The Star Ledger

President Bush Attends White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools
Ronald Reagan Building
Washington, D.C.

10:23 A.M. EDT

President George W. Bush delivers remarks Thursday, April 24, 2008, during the White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools. Said the President, "I am fully aware that in inner-city America some children are getting a good education, but a lot are consigned to inadequate schools. I believe helping these children should be a priority of a nation. It's certainly a priority to me." White House photo by Chris Greenberg

(For full text, go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/04/20080424-2.html)

The following is excerpted from the full speech, available at the link above:

"In Chicago a group of Jesuit priests found an innovative way to finance children's education called Cristo Rey, and they convinced Chicago's businesses to become involved. It's interesting that the Jesuits took the initiative. I would hope that corporate America would also take initiative. (Laughter.) But four days of the week the children go to class and then on the fifth they report for work at some of Chicago's most prestigious firms.

The businesses get energetic, reliable workers for high-turnover jobs. The students get a top-notch education plus real work experience. They feel a sense of pride when they leave some of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods for the city's tallest skyscrapers. It's a program that is working, and many of the students take that same sense of pride and accomplishment to higher education.

It's interesting to note that Cristo Rey is now involved in 19 cities. In other words, good ideas can take hold. The job of this conference is to provide a kind of go-by for people who share a sense of concern about our nation's future. And hopefully from this summit good ideas will be spawning other good ideas -- at the federal level and the state and local level, at the corporate level, and then of course at the citizen level."

Focus on state of Catholic schools

The Pope is taking time to discuss the state of Catholic schools in the U.S.