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Archdiocese to open new area high school

By Arlo Wagner
August 22, 2007

Parents looking for an affordable, Catholic-school education for their children have a rare opportunity this fall. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is opening a high school in Takoma Park where students pay part of their tuition through a work-study program.

The Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School is a partnership between the archdiocese and the nonprofit Cristo Rey Network, modeled after the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School of Chicago and founded in 2001 to help low-income families receive a Catholic education.

Cristo Rey spokesman Jeff Thielman said today that the network was approached in 2004 by Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, then archbishop of the Washington Archdiocese, who was trying to provide a Catholic education to lower-income families.

"The cardinal told us this is a great model, a great school, and he wants it here," Mr. Thielman said.

The school is the 19th in the network, which now serves 4,400 students. Another is opening this fall in Baltimore.

Cristo Rey is the first high school that the archdiocese has opened since 1952 in the District or in the Maryland counties of Calvert, Charles, Montgomery, Prince George's and St. Mary's. The archdiocese serves about 33,000 students in early learning, elementary and 17 high schools. The school offers a college-preparatory curriculum and follows the tradition of the Salesians of Don Bosco order of priests and brothers, which began educating students in 1859.

The Takoma Park school, on Larch Avenue, will open Monday with a freshman class of 127. The students will attend classes four days a week, then spend the fifth working an eight-hour day in one of the 20 participating businesses.

Students, working in teams of four, will file, copy, fax, deliver interoffice mail, assemble information packets and perform other general office duties. Their paychecks will be given to the school to help defray their education costs. The companies will pay about $30,000 a year for each team's work, said the school's president, the Rev. Steve Shafran. The family of each student pays about $2,500 annual tuition.

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