Jesuit Journeys
Winter 2006

Urban brown field of Dreams

By Phil Nero

Urban Ventures CEO Art Erickson (left) and Fr. David Haschka, SJ, head of the Twin Cities Cristo Rey Project, survey the square-block urban brown field in Minneapolis where they hope to construct a building that will house space for their youth service programs.

Imagine a warm Monday morning in September 2007. About 100 Cristo Rey High School students gather for breakfast in the school cafeteria some three miles south of downtown Minneapolis on what 18 months earlier was an urban brown field.

They are nervous – especially the 25 percent scheduled to spend the day at their new jobs, not their new school. Work on a school day? Yes, that’s part of the Cristo Rey model in which kids who otherwise could not afford a Catholic college prep education help pay their tuition. By spending five days a month with one of the school’s corporate partners, they learn as much from real world role models as they do from textbooks and classroom teachers. These students, the Class of 2011, envision hopeful futures with college and real careers.

But it’s really winter 2006. The ground where these dreams might grow is snow-covered, barren, and frozen. What chance really is there for this school of dreams to become reality?

“We think we can fully execute the project,” says a confident Pat Ryan, president of The Ryan Companies, a key partner in the proposed project. Ryan and his cousin Jim Ryan, company CEO, are backing up their confidence with a $4 million pledge to jumpstart construction, their area of expertise.

The company, which develops and manages premier construction projects for companies such as Target Corporation, Ford Motor Company, and U.S. Bancorp, has a vested interest in the neighborhood and is currently in the midst of a nearby major mixed-use (office, health care, retail, industrial, and residential) redevelopment project centered around a towering art-deco structure that was once a massive retail and distribution center for Sears.

The Ryans also put an ecumenical twist on this Catholic school dream when they introduced Fr. Gene Donahue, SJ, to Art Erickson, whom they met in 2002. Fr. Donahue conducted preliminary studies when the Wisconsin Province Society of Jesus began giving serious consideration to building a Twin Cities-area Cristo Rey model school in May 2004.

(From left) Jim Ryan, CEO of The Ryan Companies, Fr. David Hascka, SJ, head of the Twin Cities Cristo Rey Project, and Art Erickson, CEO of Urban Ventures, review building plans.

Erickson, a former Methodist youth minister, is the long-time CEO of Urban Ventures, a faith-based non-sectarian sponsored enterprise which also harbors dreams for the kids of south Minneapolis – dreams rooted in an afterschool program.

“It dawned on us that Art and the Jesuits really had the same goal – to help kids in that neighborhood,” Pat Ryan says. “Jim and I started wondering if there might be a possible marriage of the two projects to maximize the efficiency of the bricks and mortar. If they could share some common facilities, then you have a continuum of care from 7 a.m. on into the evening. You also have the ecumenical aspect of Catholics and other faiths working together in a common mission to save cities and kids. What a message!”

Adds Jim Ryan: “Art’s focus is to save kids and Cristo Rey wants to educate kids. Our corporate philanthropic philosophy focuses on poverty, youth, and education. So it all fits together.”

“When the Ryans approached me about working with the Jesuits on this project, I thought it was an exciting idea,” says Erickson. “The bottom line is we can do more for the kids this way. We have complementary ways of working toward the same goal.”Working alongside Urban Ventures also appeals to Fr. David Haschka, SJ, who inherited the reins to the Jesuit side of the project from Fr. Donahue in 2005.

“Certainly partnering in a shared facility complicates the project, but the benefits far outweigh the complications,” Fr. Haschka says.

Pat Ryan	Darren Jackson

Since Vatican II, the Church has urged Catholics to engage in a “dialog of action” with other religious traditions. Similarly, Jesuit documents have consistently called for collaboration with the laity in mission.

“This project invites us to join together to better serve the poor,” Fr. Haschka says. “No one ever said preferential treatment of the poor and collaboration are the easiest ways to go. But in this case it is potentially a unique and very effective way.”

Plans call for a $29 million Colin Powell Youth Leadership Center and Twin Cities Cristo Rey Jesuit High School complex totaling 173,354 square feet of program and parking space. Of that, about 43,950 square feet would be shared program space – 28,200 square feet for a gymnasium and athletic club, a 6,459 square-foot auditorium, and another 9,300 square feet for cafeteria space, dance and visual arts facilities, and a welcoming area.

Plans call for a $29million Colin Powell Youth Leadership Center and Twin Cities Cristo Rey Jesuit High School complex totaling 173,354 square feet of program and parking space. Of that, about 43,950 square feet would be shared program space – 28,200 square feet for a gymnasium and athletic club, a 6,459 square-foot auditorium, and another 9,300 square feet for cafeteria space, dance and visual arts facilities, and a welcoming area.

Darren Jackson, chief financial officer for Best Buy Co. Inc. is among the growing group of corporate and education partners attracted to the project. He met early on with Fr. Donahue and Bonnie Hugeback, a project assistant who helped initiate community contacts and conduct early focus groups.

Kris Melloy

“I think this concept brings us back to our Catholic education roots,” says Jackson, who also sits on the Marquette University Board of Trustees. Historically,Catholic schools were established to help children of immigrant populations adjust to a new world. Jackson thinks the children of disadvantaged households face equally daunting challenges.

Feeling blessed to have grown up with hardworking parents who made sacrifices for his education and future, he wants to help kids gain similar opportunities they would not otherwise have to “shape and make visible a personal horizon with a real future. Urban Ventures touches 12,000 kids under the age of 18 and only 20 percent of those have two parents in the household. That makes it tough to shape a horizon.”

Jackson also believes that as the network of Cristo Rey schools grows, it will influence other education systems and has committed Best Buy to establish two paid educational partnership positions for the 2007-08 school year. Under the Cristo Rey model that means eight kids will have the means to pay their share of their education while learning outside the classroom. They won’t be token positions in a warehouse.

“We’ll place them anywhere from our Law Department to Finance at our headquarters where they will be learning the nature of business and the corporate environment. The model is dependent on giving them access to corporate insights and experiences,” says Jackson.

The Cristo Rey schools There are presently 11 Cristro Rey Network schools. Austin, TX ­ Juan Diego Catholic High School (2002) CAMBRIDGE, MA ­ North Cambridge Catholic High School (2004) CHICAGO, IL ­ Cristo Rey Jesuit High School (1996) CLEVELAND, OH ­ St. Martin de Porres High School (2004) DENVER, CO ­ Arrupe Jesuit High School (2003) LAWRENCE, MA ­ Notre Dame High School (2004) LOS ANGELES, CA - Verbum Dei High School (2002) NEW YORK, NY ­ Cristo Rey New York High School (2004) PORTLAND, OR ­ De La Salle North Catholic (2001) TUCSON, AZ ­ San Miguel High School (2004) WAUKEGAN, IL ­ Saint Martin de Porres High School (2004) To Open in 2006 KANSAS CITY, MO ­ Cristo Rey Kansas City High School (Fall 2006) INDIANAPOLIS, IN ­ Providence Cristo Rey High School (Fall 2006) SACRAMENTO, CA ­ Cristo Rey Sacramento High School (Fall 2006) Feasibility Studies BALTIMORE, MD BIRMINGHAM, AL MINNEAPOLIS, MN NEWARK, NJ OAKLAND, CA OMAHA, NE WASHINGTON, D.C.

“From the Best Buy perspective, it gives us a chance to fully engage the spirit of philanthropy. Often we think just in terms of where to send the check. This is a model that gets us personally involved in the community in a mutually beneficial exchange among employees, business, and kids. It gives our company a chance to influence the quality of education while sharing the responsibility for the longer term quality of the entire system, and involves us in helping to change behaviors that not only influence the classroom, but everyday life.”

If the money can be raised and the complex is built, an additional class will be added each year for four years until the school reaches its four-year capacity. As the number of students grows, so will Best Buy’s commitment.

“We have the capacity to go from two jobs shared by eight kids to five or 10 jobs, depending on how it unfolds over time,”Jackson says.

But there is more to the equation than a building and jobs. At the heart of the Cristo Rey model is a fully balanced academic program with rigorous standards. That is where Kris Melloy, a long-time educator and professor of special education at St. Thomas University, comes in.

“Kris is leading the effort to design our curriculum and educational strategy,” Fr. Haschka says. Melloy was a high school special education teacher until 1989 and has been training others in the field of motivational behavior disorders ever since.

“Cristo Rey is the most exciting thing I’ve seen happen in education,” says Melloy. “The combination curriculum is very innovative and very promising for a group of children that would not have the opportunity for this kind of experience.”

Most existing schools pluck the best students from among the poor and offer them scholarships but can’t provide the exposure to professional role models and academic support that Cristo Rey offers.

“The whole college prep piece was held out for kids who were college bound anyway,” says Melloy, who as an Ignatian Associate (www.ignatianassociates.org) feels a deep commitment to creating options for the poor. “Cristo Rey has opened up both those worlds for average kids and gems in the rough who otherwise wouldn’t have this range of experience and opportunities. It’s a marriage of work experience and education – and not just education to get you out the door of high school, but on to college and a lifetime of learning and opportunities for all kinds of careers and vocations in places other than the service economy. Education is power and the better educated you are the more opportunities you have. You might still choose a career in the service economy but it will be a choice, not a limitation.”

The school uniform is appropriate dress for a corporate office, explains Melloy. Curriculum includes not only “teaching kids how to dress, how to act, how to behave,and to do schoolwork – but also how to work and function in a corporate setting.”

As a special education expert, she knows kids who live in poverty are shortchanged educationally and are higher risks to develop mental health issues related to a lack of nutrition, community support, and positive adult influences in their lives. They also graduate typical high schools at a rate of 30 percent to 50 percent of their freshman class, depending on the school.

“The Cristo Rey model has an 80 percent graduation rate among incoming freshmen,” says Melloy. “I want to be part of that.”

Imagine a warm Friday evening in May 2011. About 100 members of the first graduating class of the Twin Cities Cristo Rey High School gather in the auditorium of a modern building on what just five years earlier was an urban brown field. From the stage where they receive their high school diplomas, they dare to dream of promising futures that include a college education and real opportunities.

An artist’s rendering of the proposed Twin Cities Cristo Rey School and Urban Ventures facility.