Eager to Learn, Newark Teenagers Embrace Lessons in Perseverance

I've never visited at Cristo Rey school but have heard good things about them.  Here's an article in today's NYT about a new CR school in Newark:

After every cataclysm had struck — after his father had died and his mother had fallen ill with heart disease, after one older brother had gone into jail and another into a psychiatric hospital, after exhausting the welcome at a sister’s home and moving into a shelter, after shuttling through 13 schools by  the eighth grade — after all of that, Bukhari Washington clung to one vision.
 
Somehow, he would still attend Christ the King Prep.
 
By last spring, he had been admitted to the school, the first new Catholic high school to open in this epically troubled city in half a century. Come  September, he was to enter with the first 100 freshmen. Donors had put forward not only tuition for Bukhari, but also money for his school uniform of blue blazer, pressed trousers and striped tie.

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Eager to Learn, Newark Teenagers Embrace Lessons in Perseverance
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/education/24education.html <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/education/24education.html>


NEWARK -- After every cataclysm had struck — after his father had died and his mother had fallen ill with heart disease, after one older brother had gone into jail and another into a psychiatric hospital, after exhausting the welcome at a sister’s home and moving into a shelter, after shuttling through 13 schools by the eighth grade — after all of that, Bukhari Washington clung to one vision.