Christ the King Prep's Unique Approach to Workforce Training

As a part of our "Newark at a Crossroads" series, taped at NJIT, Father Robert Sandoz, President of Christ the King Prep in Newark, talks about the school’s unique way of preparing students for the workforce.

10/4/16 #1903

Excerpt:

"We are pleased to welcome Father Robert Sandoz, who is the president of Christ the King Prep School. How you doing Father? Well, thank you. For those who do not know what Christ the King is, describe it. Christ the King Prep is an innovative school that's part of a network of thirty two schools across the United States called the Cristo Rey Network, and what we are doing is trying to transform urban America, one student at a time. How many students do you have? Two hundred seventy. Who are they? They're students who come from the general greater Newark area, they're students who have some need, but they have the desire to make more of themselves. And the innovative feature of our schools is that our students only come to school four days a week, and they work one day a week in business and corporate settings, and that's part... two things happen. That's part of the way they fund their education, and secondly, what we're trying to do is create a success formula for young people to be successful not only in their education, but in the world world. Because if we look at the young people today, a student who's in high school that student is gonna be working to around the year 2070. And in the course of that work life is going to have seven careers, not jobs. Hmm. Careers, and we already know that the careers from which they will eventually retire don't even exist. Father, you and I, we talked about this right before we got on the air, some of us who had the pleasure, the experience of going to an urban Catholic high school... Right. Mine doesn't even exist anymore, as you well know. Right. Essex Catholic High School and the Christian Brothers were the brothers who were my mentors and leaders. Right. Yours is not exactly the same? Correct. But what do you believe an urban Catholic High School and educational experience in general gives to inner city kids? It's really... Particularly those of us who didn't have other options? Sure. It's, we talk about outcomes. When we answer that question, we talk about outcomes. We want to provide these young people with a rigorous college preparatory education because our goal is the students are gonna graduate from high school and college. And College? And college, and we track them through college. And the second thing is we want them to be successful in the workplace. We want them to be ready to take their place so that they can be profitable, productive, contributing members of the work society, especially in Newark. And thirdly, we talk about an outcome in character..."