Jesuit Journeys
Spring 2007

Turning Points
By Julia Pferdehirt & Todd Svanoe

Fr. Bill Johnson, SJ and Dr. Kris Melloy know their journey is just beginning as Cristo Rey Jesuit High School prepares to open in August 2007.

A business executive, a tenured professor and a Jesuit priest end up in a dicey inner-city neighborhood next to a Dollar Store.

This isn’t the beginning of a joke which might be told after supper at a Jesuit community. This is the beginning of a lifechanging journey and a revolution in education in the Twin Cities.

Stephen Schulz, Dr. Kristine Melloy, and Fr. Bill Johnson, SJ, aren’t surprised by the turn their lives have taken. Each one has been on what Dr. Melloy calls “a venture into the interior.” That venture led them to help create a Cristo Rey Jesuit High School for urban youth from low-income families in South Minneapolis.

“I would have come to Cristo Rey as a volunteer if necessary,” said Melloy, who will be the school’s principal. “That’s how much I believe in this.”

As a tenured professor with a Ph.D. in Special Education, Melloy’s career track seemed established. She had become an Ignatian Associate. Her life was spiritually and professionally rewarding.

“Two and one half years ago I was invited to help with a feasibility study for this school,” said Melloy. “I visited Chicago’s Cristo Rey High School and came back with an overwhelming sense that I needed to be involved.”

Melloy visited three more schools in the Cristo Rey Network. Their practical application of the Jesuit vision to educate the whole person impressed her as an educator. “I’d spent my career working with students with emotional disorders. Poverty is the number one risk factor for mental health issues. Cristo Rey schools provide the kind of education these kids need to escape the cycle of poverty and change their lives.”

The feasibility study confirmed the impoverished Central-Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis as a good location for a Cristo Rey school. Melloy volunteered to head a task force to shape the academic curriculum.

An idea became a vision, and the vision produced a plan. Cristo Rey visionaries crossed paths with Urban Ventures Leadership Foundation, an inter-denominational Christian non-profit with deep roots in South Minneapolis. Business and community leaders expressed interest. A Cristo Rey-Urban Ventures partnership emerged.

This partnership would place the Jesuit high school inside Urban Ventures’ newly-built Colin Powell Youth Leadership Center, creating a hub for a community which seems to desperately need a strong anchor.

While drawn to the project, Melloy said it was her 10 years as an Ignatian Associate that helped her commit to what others may consider a risky start-up.

The process started, she said, “with wondering… prayer…discernment. The Holy Spirit was leading, speaking, ‘This is the job you’ve been preparing for all your life. It addresses every vision and goal you’ve set for yourself.’ It was an invitation from God.”

When the Cristo Rey Network agreed to establish the school, Network President Fr. John Foley, SJ asked Dr. Melloy if she would help launch the project. She said yes, and later was chosen as principal.

She joins a busy team of educational pioneers in a barebones one-room office of cubicles, making the vision a reality. Teachers and corporate internship staff must be hired and trained. A freshman class of 125 students must be recruited by the fall. Melloy knows most of those students will be academically behind. Yet, she is confident.

“Kids consistently rise to the challenge. Adults are afraid to let them prove what they can really do,” Melloy said. “These students take on adult responsibilities. Many run their households because their parents work long hours.”

In mid-August, when most students are wringing the last drops of fun from summer break, students will begin a three-week orientation to school and workplace internships. She will fit in an eight-day silent Ignatian retreat to prepare her heart for this new adventure.

“I’ve never been involved with an organization where you constantly feel the presence of the Holy Spirit –in the schools, and in our little office here,” she said. “In my first year as an Ignatian Associate, I understood that I would serve children and youth living in poverty. Now, to be employed in a formal sense with the Jesuits is like a dream come true.”

A Businessman’s Journey: Experience, Reflect, Act

Director of Corporate Internships Steve Schulz described his transition from 22 successful years in the business world to the business office of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in three words: experience, reflect, act.

Schulz has always combined business and service. He started a Medicaid HMO in rural Kentucky and managed a Chicago community clinic. He’s volunteered as a Big Brother, has been a board member of an after-school outreach program and is active in parish service.

Life was both good and rewarding. “I was the product of Jesuit education, working for a national healthcare consulting firm,” Schulz said. “I traveled and spent winters in Tucson. Then I was asked to visit Jesuit missionaries in India.”

The trip was part of a new Wisconsin Province immersion experience to the Kohima Region of India. The province has a twinning agreement with the region and last year lay colleagues and Jesuits visited the works and people.

This trip pushed Schulz’s vision for service to a new level. In rural India he met missionary priests who advocated for workers’ rights and basic needs like food or health care. “I saw selfless men,and reflected, is there something more I could be doing?”

Schulz participated in the Twin Cities feasibility study, adding his business expertise. After visiting schools in the Cristo Rey Network, he was hooked.

“Ignatian spirituality calls us to experience, reflect, and act,” Schulz said. “I’ve experienced the business world and I experienced the success of these schools. I reflected on my trip to India and what I’d learned from so many Jesuit teachers. Then I reflected on being blessed and successful.” Schulz asked what it would mean to leave his winterin- Arizona, well-paying consultant position. Then, he acted. “Being part of this school will allow me to make a difference – to serve 500 kids.”

“Will I miss Tucson? The pay check?” Schulz said. “Sure.” But a more compelling vision has captured his heart. What excited Schulz most about Cristo Rey is that every student earns 75% of tuition working in a business one full day each week.

The idea that students could earn their tuition was unique and untried. It has become the backbone of the Cristo Rey system. Nearly 95% of Cristo Rey students graduate. More than 80% are attending or have graduated from college. “The job element is key,” said Cristo Rey-Twin Cities President Fr. David Haschka, SJ. “A student has a reason to pass that math test. They’re using those skills at work on Friday.”

Part of Schulz’s job is recruiting corporate “sponsors” for student internship jobs. He’s optimistic about this challenge, meeting with six or seven businesses each week. The more challenging aspect for him personally is learning about his new low-income neighborhood.

“I am weekly, if not daily, challenged to hear about the lives of people in the city where I’ve lived for 13 years. I had no idea so many people were struggling in so many ways. You see, I knew about poverty from a health care perspective, but the daily challenges of poverty were new to me.”

Never mind Minnesota’s below-zero winters or walking with the corporate giants. There’s a bigger challenge. “What will I say to these 14-year-olds?” he says, with the smile of someone who is being given a new experience to reflect on – and someone who is ready to grow. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Fr. Bill Finds “Truer self” in Serving

Fr. Bill Johnson, SJ knows about interacting with youth, but the staff in Minneapolis will look to him for much more. Johnson brings the experience of having been in on the ground level of the now-thriving Nativity Jesuit Middle School in Milwaukee begun in 1993, and having helped established it over a period of 12 years.

While empowered by that success, Fr. Johnson is energized by the new dimensions of this calling. “Nativity was a Latino school, Cristo Rey will be more diverse,” Fr. Johnson said. “Central and Phillips have been among the most neglected neighborhoods in the Twin Cities. It just seems like this is where we’re supposed to be.”

Indeed, since 1982 when three South Minneapolis high schools were closed, gangs, drug dealing and prostitution have been more prevalent here than educational opportunities.

As Director of Admissions, Johnson spearheads the mountainous job of filling 125 seats at Cristo Rey-Twin Cities with “trail blazers,” as he calls them, the first freshman class. “It’s a taller task than recruiting the 50+ middle schoolers at Nativity,” he says. “Our goal here in four years is to have 10 times that many, a high school of 500 students.”

Yet, far from daunted, Johnson has a bounce in his step. “If it’s up to me, we’re doomed,” he says smiling, yet dead serious. “I know this is of the Holy Spirit. If we do our part, the benefactors, corporate employers and even schools and universities will step up to join us in serving these kids.” If the first Hard Hat Tour of the Cristo Rey/Colin Powell Center building was any indication, he’s right. There were 20 adults, including representatives of four media outlets, who showed up on Feb. 1 to see five students receive acceptance letters to the school. They all seemed eager to report any positive educational turn in this part of the city.

Johnson’s light-hearted humor is injecting faith and hope where it is greatly needed. At one point in the tour, with the camera’s rolling, he spontaneously turned to a Latino recruit named Frank, and asked him what his favorite color was. “Blue,” said Frank. Then, turning to the construction manager on the tour, Johnson said, “Can we get a blue room for Frank?”

The media moment proved eerily prophetic. Moments later Frank announced that he hoped to get math help at Cristo Rey to fulfill his dream of being an architect who could build schools like this.

Johnson’s ability to “speak the language” of Latino kids will be a valuable asset. In only eight years, the historic Lake Street corridor has filled up from one to now 250 Latino shops from Highway. 35W to the Mississippi. More Latino residents are entering the neighborhood than any other group.

And as a mark of their personal approach to ministry, Fr. Johnson, Fr. Haschka and others have moved into the neighborhood, sharing a house only blocks from the school. “As Jesuits, we’re re-finding our roots with today’s newly-arrived people,” Johnson said.

The Twin Cities high school has brought the Jesuit mission full-circle, he said. “A century ago, Jesuits educated immigrants’ kids. Now those children are community leaders. Today, Jesuits are teaching new immigrants from Mexico, Central America, or Africa. Maybe in a generation we’ll see these students as leaders in their communities.”

Johnson speaks of the benefit he will receive from living and working there. “I find God more easily in humble people; they bring out the best in me and help me to know my truer self. In Milwaukee, I became friends with so many Latino families. They taught me, opened my eyes. They have that ‘spark’ and joy in life. It’s contagious!”

So while the new Cristo Rey Twin Cities team busily hires, trains and recruits, they are taking care to grow and be changed personally. They ponder God’s sense of humor in placing them in a crowded office next to a Dollar Store where ideal recruits come and go.

“We see a family,” said Dr. Melloy, “and right away, we’re wondering, ‘Do you have an 8th grader? Is this a Cristo Rey family here?’”

Yet they sense not so much the press of the marketplace as the prodding of a mission. Fr. Johnson speaks for the team in saying, “We look forward to making new friends here. Finding Jesus in them. Hoping they see Jesus in us.”