A special honor roll list for Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School ran in a recent edition of the Washington Business Journal, not only congratulating the graduating members of the Takoma Park school’s class of 2016, but also thanking and listing 125 corporate partners for helping to make the students’ dreams a reality.
Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Washington and the Salesians of Don Bosco features an innovative Corporate Work Study Program – the only one of its kind in the Washington area – in which students from low-income families are able to work one day a week at leading businesses and institutions to gain professional experience and help pay for their college-preparatory education.
The school’s corporate partners listed in the ad formed an honor roll of their own, and came from many different fields, including accounting and consulting, professional and trade associations, automotive firms, construction and landscape companies, consumer service agencies, educational institutions, financial service groups, government departments, hospitals and medical centers, hotels and hospitality providers, law firms, non-profit groups, real estate companies and science, technology and engineering agencies.
The ad noted that those corporate partnerships with the Cristo Rey students help make it “the School that Works,” for the graduates and for the community. “For the sixth straight year, 100 percent of DBCR seniors have been accepted to college,” the ad copy said. More than 80 percent of its students are the first members of their families to attend college. This past year, Cristo Rey’’s nearly 400 students came from 52 area zip codes. The student body was 68 percent Hispanic and 18 percent African American.
Salesian Father Michael Conway, completing his first year as Cristo Rey’s president, said watching the 71 seniors receive their diplomas was an unforgettable experience. “The graduation was spectacular, to be able to experience young people achieving their goals and dreams in life and to see the smiles on their faces and (on) their families was spectacular,” he said.
He noted that about two dozen of the students’ work supervisors attended the graduation, to celebrate with them. One company gave the girl who worked for them a MacBook computer as a graduation gift, and another firm gave a necklace to a girl in Cristo Rey’s graduating class to congratulate her and thank her for her good work.
In his homily at the school’s baccalaureate Mass, Cardinal Wuerl spoke about a different kind of gift that all the graduates had received along with their academic education and work experience – their grounding in the Catholic faith. “With your friends, your family, your school, you also have a living, abiding relationship with God. May God bless you, and may you always be open to the power of the Spirit within you to make this world a better place,” he said.
Cardinal Wuerl blessed and dedicated Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School when it opened in the fall of 2007, after the groundwork for establishing the school had begun under Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, his predecessor as archbishop. Salesian Father Steve Shafran, the school’s founding president, left that post last sumer to become a provincial for his order.
Father Conway praised Cardinal Wuerl for his ongoing support of the school, which has included celebrating Masses for the students, participating in its expansion efforts, and blessing its new science and technology wing. The students there know the cardinal as a member of their community, the priest said.
This year’s graduation ceremony, as in years past, included several special features, as Cristo Rey graduates who have since graduated from college come back to join their high school’s graduation procession. “It’s an affirmation for them (graduating seniors) that they can achieve the dream they’ve been working on,” said Ana Chapa, the executive director of the school’s Corporate Work Study Program.
That message is reinforced in the school’s entranceway, where a large flat screen TV shows rotating images of the photos of honor graduates from this year’s Cristo Rey graduating class and the logos and names of the colleges that they will be attending.
Chapa said Cristo Rey students learn that with hard work and dedication, they can achieve their dreams. “This is the strength they bring to their college campuses and to their families. They know how to dig deep and get it done. Our students have been living in the real world,” she said.
Another tradition unfolded at this year’s graduation, as the school’s teachers and staff members lined up along the National Shrine’s center aisle, so graduating seniors could thank each one personally, and receive congratulations from them as they move on to college. “This will always be their family,” Father Conway said.
