CRISTO REY DALLAS CORPORATE WORK STUDY PRGM

Each year, the Corporate Work Study Program at Cristo Rey Dallas College Prep serves more than 400 students, 99% of whom are students of color and 94% of whom have family incomes within 250% of the federal poverty line. The program provides these students with vital access to new career paths, empowers each of them to develop long-term academic and professional goals, and resources them with the tools and experience they need to achieve their aspirations. Specifically, the corporation partnered with 120 local businesses to provide work study jobs for each of Cristo Rey Dallas High School, Inc's 421 students during the year ended June 30, 2022. Through these efforts, the corporation was able to provide tuition assistance via Qualified Education Assistance Place ("QEAP") in the amount of $2,209,20 0 Students begin the program each August with the three-week VIVA! training camp, where they learn about and prepare for a professional workplace. Upon completion, students are placed in teams of four, each working one full business day weekly throughout the school year and rotating Fridays at premiere Dallas companies and nonprofit organizations. Through this unique program design, each student team fulfills one full-time, entry level job role. Each year, every student accumulates more than 400 hours of hands-on work experience and receives ongoing feedback from their supervisors. Outside their job roles, students also attend a regular "Preparedness for the Modern Workplace" course, where they learn additional hard and soft skills such as elevator pitches, feedback and goal-setting, accounting basics (taught by Deloitte), and professional networking to aid them in their work study positions. In 2021-2022, we continued to add new job partners, including Sewell Automotive Companies, Vistra Corp, Foley & Lardner LLP, Sun Holdings, Inc., and Origin Bank. Our job partners and students also embraced the growth of remote co-working across all industry sectors, with approximately 20 students utilizing the school's exciting new Cityplace Tower space for remote CWSP work each day. Annually, 97%+ of job partners rate their students as meeting or exceeding their expectations, and they rave about the value their student workers provide: -"Kristina should be recognized every day. She is intelligent, hardworking, and takes initiative. A specific recognition for Kristina is that she assisted Alicia Allred in a project for our CEO." -"Partnering with the Cristo Rey student program has been a great resource for our marketing efforts and external communications. Each year the students have been able to bring a fresh perspective to our team, detailed market research, and offer new insights on how social media can be further utilized to reach our target audience." -"On Maliha's second day of work, we hosted all of our executives across the nation in our office. She was immediately ready to jump in and was a huge help!!! She is so detail oriented and we feel like everything we give her is done thoroughly. We can trust her with so much more than we could have ever hoped for. She is a joy to work with, and she is always taking the lead to look for more opportunities to help out!" Ultimately, the program's highly resourced and supportive environment is truly a transformational opportunity for area students. In nearby public schools, student post-secondary achievement lags far behind state averages. Just under 50% of Pleasant Grove students enroll in college, and fewer than 10% go on to complete a degree. In contrast, at CRD, more than 90% of graduates go on to enroll in college. Nationally, Cristo Rey Network alumni are nearly FIVE TIMES more likely to complete their degree than those attending a Pleasant Grove public high school. Of those, nearly 95% will be the first in their families to attain a degree. This is system-level change in action.