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October 16, 2002
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Jesuits to open innovative new high school at old Cathedral High site
Inner-city school for poor students 'who never see an office or a desk'
By Jack Bacon
Jesuits and business leaders plan to open a new coed high school in the old Cathedral/Central High School next fall to serve low-income students, combining traditional education and an innovative program of on-the-job white-collar experience with tuition assistance.
"This
program will reach students who never see an office or a desk," said
Richard Campbell, president of the board. The school was incorporated
as Arrupe Jesuit High School, named after the late Spanish superior general
of the order, Father Pedro Arrupe.
The project — presenting a massive economic challenge to the business community — has been in the discussion, research and planning process involving the business community and leaders of the Jesuit order from throughout the country for more than a year, and in some respects years before that.
Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., said the project fulfills his desire to return the site to use as a school.
"It's always been my hope that the building would again be used as a Catholic school," he said. "This project would expand Catholic high school education in Denver, and at the same time provide critical resources for our existing Denver schools. It really is a win-win situation.
"I'm grateful to the lay leaders who have invested themselves in the project, and I'm grateful to the Jesuits for their willingness to take it on."
The Arrupe Jesuit High School model was inaugurated in 1996 as Cristo Rey High School in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, a virtually all-Hispanic poor community of more than 500,000 on the city's southwest side. It opened with approximately 100 students and now has more than 450 in all four high school classes. Since then similar programs have been started in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, by Jesuits and in Portland, Ore., by the Christian Brothers, who plan another in Tucson, Ariz. Other Jesuit models are due in New York's Bronx and Cleveland.
"It worked, and it has worked wonderfully," said Jesuit Father Steven W. Planning, 37, who helped start Cristo Rey and was appointed president of Arrupe Jesuit in Denver.
Details of the program were presented to approximately 70 business leaders at a Denver Country Club breakfast Oct. 10. The formal public announcement was scheduled Oct. 15 at the high school site.
A lengthy feasibility study headed by Jesuit Father Tom Cwik and prompted by Jesuit Father Frank Reale, provincial of the Jesuit Missouri Province, led to the new school, Campbell said. An earlier proposal of former St. Joseph School at West Fifth Avenue and Galapago Street was considered inadequate because of numerous parish social service and catechetical programs conducted there.
The multi-million-dollar project is a formidable fund-raising task. Included in the costs is an agreement to buy the old high school at East 18th Avenue and Logan Street from the Archdiocese of Denver for $6 million. Initial out-of-pocket cost to get the program under way next fall requires an outlay of approximately $1.6 million, backers and potential supporters were told at the breakfast. The immediate need, Finance Committee chairman Bill Fortune said, is for $2.6 million by March to close the purchase of the old high school.
The $1.6 million for the first-year start-up and operating budget is already in hand, Fortune said.
"It's a really great start," he said.
Haven Moses, director of the Office of Community Outreach for the archdiocese's Catholic Schools, told the breakfast guests he foresaw Arrupe Jesuit as "a school for leaders."
"It's an investment that will give back threefold," he said.
The high school will be the Jesuits' second in the metropolitan area. Regis Jesuit High School moved from its long-time location on the Regis University campus to south Aurora in the mid-1990s, and is scheduled to open a separate girls division as part of Regis Jesuit in 2003, although classes will be conducted off campus the first year until on-site facilities are ready.
Father Planning explained Arrupe Jesuit will recruit businesses and professional offices for part-time, one-day-a-week jobs for students who fill them on a rotating basis. Students attend classes four days a week, without missing classes, which necessitates a longer school year — from mid-August to the end of June. The fifth day of each week they work at their jobs.
Students are grouped in teams of four according to days of the week so they don't miss classes on the days they work. Their classes simply aren't conducted those days.
"It's a bit of a scheduling nightmare," Father Planning conceded, but works. He noted that working isn't a novelty for many teen-agers from low-income families — "most of them work anyway."
"We solicit from companies clerical, entry-level jobs," he said.
As a corporation, Arrupe Jesuit High School takes care of all payroll accounting, workmen's compensation, insurance, supervision, etc., for the student-workers while providing the companies with committed, closely supervised employees to fill jobs typically high-turnover positions for approximately $19,000 a year. The salary pays about 70 percent of the $8,000 annual tuition, Father Planning said.
To make the program work, the school needs the business community's commitment of 25 jobs per 100 students. Arrupe Jesuit plans to start the first year with 100 in the freshman class and about 100 per year in one additional class until the senior class is reached.
Employment in offices is a must, he said, because the goal is to give students a close experience in the professional world they wouldn't get otherwise.
Father Planning was accompanied to the breakfast by Cristo Rey's first student, Gustavo Rodriquez, a graduate of Xavier University of Cincinnati and now a teacher at the Juan Diego High School in Austin also modeled on Cristo Rey. Rodriquez, one of six children whose parents both worked, related how he worked for a law firm office and in the Chicago Tribune's personnel office while he was in high school and said he considered speaking for the Denver project "an obligation" because Cristo Rey provided him an otherwise unavailable opportunity.
Father Planning said the school will offer extracurricular activities, including athletics, clubs and student government, depending on interest.
"We will offer sports," he said, basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball and soccer — all based on turnout and the initially limited size of the student body.
He also pointed out the school will not be limited to students from low-income families, although that is the purpose, and many are expected to be Hispanic.
In addition to the first three years at Cristo Rey, Father Planning spent three years teaching in Santiago, Chile, and at schools in Nigeria and Guatemala before his ordination in 1999. From 1999 to 2001, he taught at Holy Name in a largely Hispanic area of Camden, N.J. His home town is Philadelphia.
In addition to Campbell, Fortune and Father Planning, Arrupe Jesuit's board of directors comprises Patrick Byrne of the Byrne Foundation, Joseph Chacon, Jeanie Courchene, Robert Hawk, Robert J. Malone, secretary-treasurer Father Cwik, Don Gallegos, Dorothy S. Horrell, Mary Pat McCormick, Jesuit Father Timothy McMahon, T. Kevin McNicholas, Jesuit Father Thomas Prag, Thomas E. Reynolds and Jesuit Father Leo Webber.
Campbell issued the board's appeal to guests at the breakfast to support the program with donations, jobs for students and, beyond that, "to open doors for us" with their associates and friends in the business world.