Cristo Rey Columbus announced late last month that a middle school will be added to the existing high school starting with the 2026-27 academic year.
The expansion plan will begin with the admission of 25 to 30 sixth-grade students next fall and continue with the addition of seventh and eighth grades in each of the following two years, principal Ryan Pettit said last week.
The school has already begun to receive inquiries about admission to sixth grade since the application process opened Nov. 1. Most of the new students are expected to come from public and non-Catholic schools in the Columbus area.
“One big plus side of this mission is we are going to be offering a Catholic education to more families who aren’t currently getting a Catholic education,” Pettit said.
The middle school will be housed within the high school at 400 E. Town St., but will have a separate spaces and schedules. With as many as 25 percent of the high school students out of the building daily for its work study program, Pettit there is sufficient room to accommodate a middle school.
Cristo Rey Columbus High School opened in 2013 in downtown Columbus to provide a Catholic education with a rigorous curriculum for students from low- to moderate-income families in the city. The school began with ninth grade in 2013-14 and added classes each of the next three years. The 2016-17 academic year was the first with freshmen through seniors in the building.
The first graduating class comprised approximately 50 students. Since then, enrollment for grades 9-12 has consistently been around 400.
Cristo Rey is part of a network of Catholic schools across the country that offer a college preparatory education to students from financially challenged backgrounds. Since the school’s opening in Columbus, 100 percent of its graduating seniors have been accepted into college.
The Cristo Rey Network, a not-for-profit organization, was established in 2000 and modeled after Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago, which was founded four years earlier. Schools in the network integrate academics with professional work experience, which can help fund the cost of Catholic education for youth from low-income families.
Cristo Rey Columbus will be the first in the national network to add a middle school. The expansion news was announced during an Oct. 25 after-school soiree that included Bishop Earl Fernandes and Dr. Adam Dufault, the diocese’s superintendent of schools.
“The Cristo Rey model has already transformed lives through its blend of rigorous academics, faith formation, and real-world experience,” Dufault said. “Expanding to include a middle school is an innovative and mission-driven way to reach students earlier, support them more intentionally, and form them to discover who God is calling them to be.
“By beginning that journey in middle school, Cristo Rey can strengthen both faith and opportunity for young people across our community.”
The idea to start a middle school germinated from faculty recognizing that some of the students entering ninth grade at Cristo Rey lacked foundational academic skills that would help them in their educational development.
“As you’re helping students and they’re trying hard and you realize, ‘If I could have just had them in sixth grade’ … that was the seed that planted the idea,” said Pettit, who was a math teacher at the school before becoming principal. “I think we’ve all felt as teachers that if we could have just had them longer, we could have helped them more.”
Last summer, she said Joe Patrick, the school’s president since 2020, challenged her to determine whether starting a middle school was feasible.
“I never even considered we could house it here,” Pettit said. “We were discussing it and realized that this could be a real possibility. So we worked over the summer with various entities to make sure we had the support.”
With the backing of the diocese’s Office of Catholic Schools, Bishop Fernandes and the Cristo Rey Network, the school administration decided to move forward with the plan.
“I think it’s a testament to the support of the community in Columbus,” Pettit said. “We have a great faculty and staff here. There’s so much enthusiasm.”
Cristo Rey’s curriculum will follow the standards established for all diocesan middle schools.
“We’ve been meeting with them and learning some of that things that are happening in other middle schools,” Pettit said. “That’s where our standards will come from, with the full intention that our students will be ready to pursue our high school college prep curriculum their freshman year.”
She expects two middle school teachers to be hired for next year. The faculty will expand as the middle school adds grade levels in subsequent years.
Pettit said the addition of the middle school will provide leadership opportunities for high schoolers to assist future Cristy Rey middle schoolers. High school students currently visit Catholic elementary schools to serve as reading buddies.
“I already received an email from a student who’s thinking of things we could do to help our sixth graders feel welcomed and supported,” Pettit said.
Extracurricular opportunities in athletics will be available through the diocese’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO). A middle school student council will be established, and opportunities for students to form other clubs will be encouraged.
“There was a lot of conversation initially about should we do seventh and eighth grade, or sixth, seventh and eighth, and many things point to, developmentally, at age 11, the student is really ready for more abstract and complex thinking, and we wanted to get them at that turning point and that transition,” Pettit explained.
“So, as they finish fifth grade at an elementary school, they can transition to us one time at sixth grade, and we’re eliminating a real challenging transition from eighth to ninth because they’ll stay with us. The three years of foundational skills just helps to create a nice, cohesive base for students to build on.”
For more information on Cristo Rey, visit www.crchsworks.org