What happens when you place a group of 14-year-olds in a corporate work environment in exchange for a chance to earn a nearly free private Catholic high school education from a school with a 100% college acceptance track record?
Baton Rouge is about to find out.
As Business Report details in a feature from the new issue, the Capital City is the latest venture of Cristo Rey—a Chicago network of 30 high schools across the country that uses a corporate work study program to supplement tuition costs for its unprivileged students.
Its formula is simple. Give low-income kids a chance to receive a private high school education for about $1,000 per year while working for local corporations to supplement the remaining tuition. In exchange, the contributing business receive 40 hours per week of work from a team of four students at a “salary” of $31,000 per year. Each student works five full days per month and is transported to their job each day from a school van.
The kids get educated. The business feels good and possibly invests in a future employee.
“It’s my hope that the experience that some of these students have here will bring them back to Lamar,” says Sean Reilly, CEO of Lamar Advertising Co., one of the companies participating in the work study program. “I hope they complete their education as far as they can take it, and maybe one day one of those kids who worked here through high school will knock on our door and make a career here.”
There are 41 businesses in Baton Rouge that are potential corporate partners, says James Llorens, president of Cristo Rey Baton Rouge High School. When the students begin school next August they will work locally in the health care industry, law offices, banks, construction companies, governmental agencies and accounting firms. All of the students will be trained prior to the start of school to learn corporate etiquette and other “soft skills,” Llorens says.
“Students come in with a lot more skills than we give them credit for, especially technology skills. You would be surprised at what these young men and women can do when they have the proper guidance,” Llorens says. “We don’t want them to just be sitting there. We want them to be exposed and learning basic jobs and know what goes on in an office. As they grow into their second, third and fourth years of school, their skill sets will grow.”
Cristo Rey is leasing the shuttered Redemptorist High School building on Saint Gerard Avenue from the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge. However, unlike other Catholic high schools in Baton Rouge, Cristo Rey will not be under the diocese. It is an independently run school similar to a charter school but receives half of its operating budget from the corporate partners, and students will be responsible for about $1,000 per year. That’s a small price to pay for a private education—private high schools in Baton Rouge come with a price tag of between $10,000 and $15,000 annually.
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