With the close of our school year at the end of June, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School completed its first year of service to our inaugural freshman class of 109 young men and women of Baltimore City. Cristo Rey Jesuit has brought a unique work-study program to Baltimore, where each student meets the demands of a college-prep curriculum, receives real job experience thanks to our partnership with the Baltimore business community, and participates in the unique cura personalis — or care for the individual — that is the hallmark of a Jesuit education.

While we are a new school, we are not a pilot program. We are an independent school, not an isolated school. We are empowered by our membership in the Cristo Rey network of schools. The 19 network schools across the country are successful because of the self-knowledge and expertise that can only be generated by our close collaboration. Together, we member schools hold ourselves accountable to our 10 rigorous “Mission Effectiveness Standards,” share best practices, scrutinize our business plans to build in greater efficiencies, participate in well-designed nationwide professional training, and leverage our national presence for fundraising and “jobraising.”

We believe education is a public good to be entrusted to the care of schools that can render an accurate public accounting of their performance. The bar is high because Baltimore families have entrusted their sons and daughters to us for four years to prepare them to enter and to succeed in college. We have made promises to our families and to the Baltimore community, and you deserve a report of our results.

We have enrolled a student body that reflects the racial, ethnic and religious diversity of Baltimore City. Seventy-four percent of our students claim religious traditions other than Roman Catholic.

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The average income of our families is $30,000. We are serving students from disadvantaged neighborhoods across the city. We ask families to contribute up to $2,500 for this private, college-prep education. Eighty percent of families receive a discount according to their capacity to pay.

Our attendance rate is 98 percent, and on-time student arrivals in the morning are above 99 percent.

We have retained more than 90 percent of our students. Those who have left us have continued their secondary education elsewhere.

At Cristo Rey Jesuit, our students have earned more than $750,000 this year alone toward the financing of their education. Entry-level jobs for our students in businesses and nonprofits throughout the Baltimore area bring valuable resources to the school. Across the 19 Cristo Rey Network schools, students have contributed more than $22 million through the salary they earn in their jobs. The investment our students are making in their own education inspires their individual donors, foundations and the Baltimore business community to partner with them.

Our students have a nine-hour school day, work one eight-hour day per week and juggle their responsibilities at home, all the while confronting and overcoming the challenges that persist in the lives of Baltimore City youth.

Far from extracting our students from their environment, our students have increased their engagement with family and community. In fact, they have contributed more than 950 hours in service to the city. Their academic, employment, family, community and service experiences are helping them to grow in resilience and maturity.

We dream and we plan. Four Cristo Rey Network schools had their first graduating classes in 2008. One hundred percent of graduates have been accepted into two- or four-year colleges and universities. There is every indication that our students will continue that success.

I hope Baltimore is proud of the students whose strong performance in school and on the job has made possible this report. Having completed this first year, we now look to the second year of our innovative work-study school, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, “where learning gets to work.”