Unique Hire4Ed program allows Minneapolis’ Cristo Rey Jesuit High School to help at-risk city kids, but more job matches are needed

By Mark A. Weber

Elizabeth Aguirre is in her cubicle at Eden Prairie’s C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., working on reports for her supervisor, Jen Johnson.

On another day, Mohamed Ali is doing similar work, calling C.H. Robinson’s contract carriers and helping schedule the transportation of goods across the country.

These are typical workdays in a small corner of the Fortune 500 company, one of the world’s largest global logistics and transportation providers.

What is not so typical are the individuals performing the work.
Aguirre and Ali are sophomores at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis, an innovative inner-city school where one day a week the carefully selected students do more than homework – they do office work.

Cristo Rey students like Aguirre and Ali attend extended-day classes at their shiny, modern high school near Lake Street and Fourth Avenue in Minneapolis for four days a week, then spend a fifth day in the corporate world at one of more than 60 companies in the Twin Cities area. Places like C.H. Robinson, Supervalu and Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK) – all located in Eden Prairie – “hire” a four-student team for one full-time position valued at about $27,500.
The entry-level salary the companies pay the students goes straight to their tuition bills. It’s the financial building block of the Cristo Rey approach, and it gives the teenagers an education to which they would not otherwise have access.

It also puts them in a work environment where success is expected and caring, influential mentors are but an arm’s reach away.

Ali says the C.H. Robinson job has, among other things, given him more confidence. “And it carries over to my school work,” he says.
Adds the soft-spoken Aguirre: “We get a lot of experiences other 15- or 16-year-olds don’t get. It’s not like other high schools.”

Helps kids ‘dream big’

The Twin Cities high school is one of 24 Cristo Reys across the country.

Founded in Chicago, the Jesuit schools are dedicated to providing underprivileged, inner-city students a path to lifetime success by offering college-prep academics and the work experience it calls Hire4Ed.

Initially the entry-level corporate jobs were an effort to pay the bills, but they’ve become more than that. “We’re hoping it exposes them to opportunity and allows them to dream big,” said Meg Brudney, who is executive director of Hire4Ed for the Twin Cities school.

Or, as school President Father David Haschka has described Hire4Ed, “It’s an exercise in future workplace development.”

Students go through a two-week orientation and even Dale Carnegie training before starting their jobs, and throughout the school year there is ongoing contact between the school and employers. The work-study program has been so successful that, in a recent survey of companies who employ Cristo Rey students, 94 percent said the value of the students’ job performances was acceptable or great.

One of those is Brian Johnson, a C.H. Robinson general manager who connected with Cristo Rey more than three years ago. When he heard about it, “I was immediately touched and got excited about it,” he says. “I saw the potential,” especially the notion of creating future full-time employees or even tomorrow’s leaders.

Perhaps that is because Johnson, though he’s been with C.H. Robinson for 21 years, studied to be a teacher before getting into business. In addition to becoming involved in Cristo Rey’s Hire4Ed program, Johnson has also helped set up an internship program with Eden Prairie High School. Next year the company plans to add two more Cristo Rey students through the work-study program.

Johnson says all sides benefit from the program: the students because “you’re putting them in a place where they can learn”; the company because “it shows you’re an empathetic corporation,” and individual employers like him because “it’s knowing I’m making an investment in young people.”

More jobs are needed

This is Aguirre’s first job, and though she admits being nervous at the start, “I caught on pretty fast.”

“I have a good team over here,” Ali says about his C.H. Robinson colleagues, adding that Jen Johnson, whom he reports to directly, has not only been a supervisor but a friend.

After Cristo Rey, Ali plans to attend college, major in political science and eventually earn his MBA degree.

But if Cristo Rey is to grow – it hopes to add 100-125 freshmen next school year, giving Cristo Rey a full complement of grades 9-12 – it needs about 25 new jobs. That’s not an easy task in an economy where few new jobs are being created.

Brudney says that most employers who give her a chance to outline the program express an interest. “I think the biggest challenge is getting the word out,” she says.

In addition to making students job-ready, Cristo Rey provides student transportation; Aguirre and Ali take a taxi to EP and back. Technically, the students are employees of Hire4Ed and not the client companies, meaning Cristo Rey also handles the payroll, worker’s compensation and other paperwork associated with the job arrangement.

Among the financial supporters of Cristo Rey is Eden Prairie’s Pax Christi Community Church, which has awarded justice-grant money to the high school because of its effort to use education to break the cycle of poverty.

Brian Johnson acknowledges that the program requires an investment on the employer’s part – the training and oversight is probably at a higher level than with an adult temporary employee, he explains.

But he quickly adds that there’s much more to be gained by having the Cristo Rey student on board.

“The reward,” he says, “far outweighs the work involved.”

More information
If you are an employer who would like more information about becoming involved in Cristo Rey Jesuit High School’s Hire4Ed program, visit the school’s website at www.cristoreytc.org or contact Hire4Ed Executive Director Meg Brudney at 612-545-9703.