The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington plans to open next year its first new high school in 55 years as part of an effort to serve low-income families and an influx of immigrants in the metropolitan area.
"This is who we're targeting the school for," said Patricia Weitzel-O'Neill, superintendent of schools for the archdiocese. "These are the very same people who very much want their children to have a Catholic education at the high school level."
Cristo Rey High School is slated to open in fall 2007 at the renovated site of Our Lady of Sorrows School, a parish elementary school in Takoma Park.
The new school is part of a nationwide program that provides low-income students with a college-preparatory education through a work-study program.
Many of its students will come from immigrant and minority families, who make up an ever-increasing segment of Montgomery County's population.
"We have a population of immigrants from many, many different countries," Mrs. Weitzel-O'Neill said.
"You have Haitians, Africans, the Latino population ... we found, even in the elementary school where this will be located, the students speak about 10 different languages because of the different countries where they're coming from."
Foreign-born people accounted for 26.7 percent of the county's population in the 2000 census, and Hispanics were the county's fastest-growing ethnic group.
In 1990, the 55,684 Hispanics living in Montgomery County made up 7.4 percent of the county's population. That number grew to 100,604 -- or 11.5 percent of the county's population, in 2000.
The number of Catholics in the county also increased by 8.9 percent during the same 10-year period, according to the American Religion Data Archive.
By Kara Rowland - The Washington Times
Obama was excoriated for continuing the Bush administration's strictest national security policies, including indefinite detention, military commissions and a "targeted kill" program that authorizes the government to take out suspected terrorists anywhere. Published 8:56 p.m. July 29, 2010
By Sean Lengell - The Washington Times
The House ethics committee officially lodged charges against Rep. Charles B. Rangel, including that he used his office to raise $8 million for a college public policy center named after him and didn't file taxes while he was Congress' chief tax writer. Published 8:56 p.m. July 29, 2010
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