UPDATE: Before School, A Cram Session on Work

Eyes front! Briefcases ready! March!

Business Boot Camp starts Aug. 6 for 120 ninth-graders, who are going to be the first in the Washington area to earn their way through a private high school by working five days a month in local offices.

The opening of the Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School, near Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Takoma Park, in August will increase to 19 the number of Cristo Rey schools in the country that have their students learn as they earn roughly two-thirds of their tuition.

The idea, first tried in Chicago in 1996, has been hailed by many Catholic educators as a way to revive parochial schools in the inner city and give low-income students an opportunity to earn tuition money for private school and learn business skills. Don Bosco will be the first high school opened by the Archdiocese of Washington since 1951, after two years of planning and construction.

"It has been the most difficult task I have taken up in my 25 years in education and yet the most exhilarating," said the Rev. Steve Shafran, the school's president.

Each student will be assigned to a four-person team whose members will share an entry-level clerical position, making the school $30,000 a year. Each team member will work one assigned eight-hour shift between Tuesday and Friday and take turns working Monday, so each will work five days a month.

The maximum tuition for any family will be $2,500 a year, Shafran said, and only the children of low-income parents will be admitted. After the three-week Business Boot Camp to prepare students for their jobs, the school will start ninth-grade classes on Aug. 28 and add a grade each year until it is a four-year high school.

Despite the success of Cristo Rey schools in other cities, Shafran said recruiting has been difficult. "Prospective families had no facility to visit and no faculty or other students to meet," he said. He spread the word at community, church and school meetings and held open houses at the school's temporary offices in Silver Spring.

There are still openings this year, he said. Interested families may call 240-723-6100. He said he is looking for students living in the District or Montgomery or Prince George's counties "who are hardworking, highly motivated, employable, who have successfully completed the eighth grade and who would relish the challenge of a college prep curriculum."

The school has 15 job sponsors ready to hire its students, including Boland, Chevy Chase Bank, FFB Capital Partners, Georgetown University, Mid South Building Supply and Warren Communication News.

Jeff Thielman, vice president for development and initiatives for the Cristo Rey Network, said schools also will open this year in Baltimore; Birmingham, Ala.; Indianapolis; Minneapolis; Newark; and Omaha. "Our goal is to have 12,000 students in more than 30 schools by 2012," he said.

-- Jay Mathews