Nativity in the News
Please read more about our school through the articles below.
- San Diego Union-Tribune, July 2009Show Less >
On a Mission for Low-income Youths: School’s support doesn’t end after students move on
San Diego Union-Tribune (July, 2009)
By Chris Moran
Louis Centanni, an eighth-grade teacher at Nativity Prep Academy, greeted student Gilbert Garcia at the start of the school day last week. (Howard Lipin/Union-Tribune)
San Diego—It was a startling wake-up call for a high school sophomore whose attention had drifted from history class. He looked out a window and saw the face of the principal - his middle school principal.
Jonathan Arteaga recognized that stare - “like into your soul” - and thought he was in trouble. Principal Brendan Sullivan had directed it at him plenty of times at Nativity Prep Academy, a tiny Catholic middle school in San Diego’s Stockton neighborhood.
But the visit turned out to be the fulfillment of what Jonathan had previously believed was a dubious promise. Nativity Prep, which runs a 10-hour-a-day school for about 60 sixth-through eighth-graders, pledged to help him and his peers get through high school after they graduated from the academy. Sullivan was making a routine checkup to ensure Jonathan wasn’t slipping in his studies.
Nativity Prep’s mission is to deliver the sons and daughters of cooks and housekeepers to the gates of a university. Its students are all from low-income families, some with parents who don’t speak English.
The academy takes that mission so seriously that it spends about one in every five of its dollars on kids who no longer attend the school. Its graduate support program serves more than 80 former students now in high school through weekly tutoring and SAT prep classes.
“It doesn’t end with middle school. In order to break the cycle of poverty, which is our ultimate goal, we have to continue on to high school,” said Jill Cardenas, a sixth-grade teacher at Nativity Prep.
Nativity Prep, which operates from what the school’s founder says was once a motorcycle gang’s headquarters, also helps pay tuition for its former students at Bishop’s, Francis Parker, Mater Dei and other private high schools.
Except for about $30,000 in reimbursements from the national school lunch program, none of Nativity Prep’s $934,000 annual budget is government money. The Catholic school doesn’t get money from the church either, and it has never charged students tuition.
Instead it lurches into every new year confident that donations and fundraisers will allow the school to keep pace with its vision.
“We can’t not provide a scholarship to a kid who’s going to Mater Dei. He’s got to go,” said Nativity Prep founder David Rivera.
With no experience as an educator, Rivera, 42, set out to become one after a middle-of-the-night revelation to start an organization for underprivileged children.
He quit his real estate job, went to law school at Notre Dame and spent two years borrowing space in the mail room at a Catholic school in Linda Vista researching how to run a nonprofit.
Rivera opened Nativity Prep in 2001 with a cadre of fresh college graduates who taught for $35 a week. He put them up in a group home. He lived in a trailer, without plumbing, in the backyard.
Word spread throughout Stockton, Logan Heights and National City. Soon, Nativity Prep grew.
So did its professionalism. The school recently earned its accreditation, with evaluators praising its mission, principal, parent involvement and teachers’ eagerness to get training.
Four of Nativity Prep’s 10 teachers are credentialed and nine receive full-time salaries, though they earn less than public school educators. Rivera earns about $70,000 annually.
Meeting payroll depends on finding people with a passion for Catholic education and a willingness to write five-figure checks.
“We want to teach the kids in a positive way with a really strong moral foundation and strong three Rs,” said Philip Lebherz, a San Francisco-area insurance executive who is one of the academy’s biggest financial backers. “We have to create more of these schools than Father Serra created missions.”
The economy’s effect on philanthropy had by February brought Nativity Prep to within two weeks of running out of money. The $4 million in pledges Rivera secured to build a new campus shrank by three-quarters when the portfolios of would-be benefactors contracted.
But Delfina Centanni, the school’s director of advancement, was ready for a downturn. She has professionals from the auto, investment, real estate and construction industries on her board who warned her the economy would soon head south. She organized fundraising events, sent solicitations, and is planning to broaden support for the school through social-media Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, OptINnow and YouTube.
When people learn about Nativity Prep, Centanni said, they open their hearts - and their checkbooks. “This is too meaningful a project to fail,” she said.
Students and parents interview to get in. Only low-income families can apply. Sullivan said he takes only committed families. Parents sign a contract pledging to volunteer. He asks how they would handle it if their children complain about the workload. Would they push them to continue, he asks, or let them decide whether to withdraw?
If the parents say it would be up to the students, Sullivan says, it indicates that Nativity Prep is not the place for them.
Eighth-grader Richy Cardona is a typical student. His days at Nativity Prep include rigorous academics, soccer practice and Mass at a neighborhood church. His class visited a college campus recently.
He especially admires the way the school treats his older sister, who is about to enter her sophomore year at Mater Dei High. Nativity Prep gives her the tuition assistance and bus passes that make it possible for her to attend the Catholic school in Chula Vista.
“That shows me that they care about us,” said Richy, 13.
Nativity Prep is sending its first graduates to college. Of the 15 students whose families gambled on Rivera’s vision in fall 2001, 11 of them graduated from high school last month and have college-acceptance letters to San Diego State, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Academy of Art University, Humboldt State and other universities.
Two of the 15 are pursuing GEDs and the other two plan to return to high school and receive their diplomas next spring.
Jonathan Arteaga plans to study graphic design at Mesa College this September. He said the tutoring he got from Nativity Prep helped him through high school. So did the talks with the Nativity Prep teacher who picked him up at High Tech High Media Arts School in Point Loma twice a week and shuttled him back to his old school for tutoring.
Among those who attended his graduation were two teachers from Nativity Prep.
“It’s surprising that they actually went to all the trouble. They didn’t ask for gas. They didn’t ask us for anything. They just want to help us out,” Jonathan said. “They actually care.”
- Rancho Santa Fe Review, May 2009Show Less >
Breakfast Honors Student Success
Rancho Santa Fe Review (May 2009)
By David Wiemers
NPA student performers
Rancho Santa Fe—Hosting an impressive group of approximately 500, Nativity Prep held its first annual Breakfast of Champions on April 22. The event was a fundraiser to benefit the college prep school, which alleviates the cycle of poverty through education.
Held at the Mission Tower Ballroom at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the event raised awareness of the school, which was founded in 2001 by David Rivera. The school’s mission is to provide a Catholic Christian college prep, middle school education for the underserved children of Southeast San Diego. “We’ve focused on 12 neighborhoods in Southeast San Diego,” Rivera said. “On average there was a murder a week there. At Nativity Prep, we replace gangs with role models.”
Founder Rivera is living proof that education is the key to ending a destructive life. At the age of 25, Rivera was successful in real estate, yet he said, “I had a very destructive lifestyle… (of) alcohol and drug abuse.” After rehabilitation, Rivera put himself through college and graduated from law school in 1999. He then set out to give something back to the community.
Together with a brain trust, Rivera founded the Nativity Prep School. Now in its seventh year, the school is making a profound impact on its students. Brendan Sullivan, Principal of Nativity Prep Academy, said that the students put in a 10-hour day. School is from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and then there are 1.5 hours of either study hall or athletic programs. Daily attendance is an impressive 98 percent and the parent/teacher conferences have a 100 percent attendance average. Sullivan quoted Mother Theresa, “We do small things with great love.”
Several former students are now in college or about to enter colleges and universities. “You have a chance to change a life,” former student Deon Randall said to the crowd. At age 11, Randall watched his father die of diabetes, yet he never let his grades falter. The inspiring young man is now being courted by several Ivy League universities to play football and receive scholarships. “You have sponsored my future,” he told the Breakfast of Champions audience.
Nativity Prep Academy has high hopes for Randall and all students like him. Their expectation is that students succeed in high school and college and become role models and leaders in their communities. The Breakfast of Champions was chaired by Jamie Carr and the entire breakfast was underwritten by Dawn and Michael House, Linda and Deacon Mike Daniels, and Judy and Tom Thompson.
- San Diego Daily Transcript, February 2006Show Less >
Nativity Prep Receives $100K Endowment
The Daily Transcript (February 15, 2006)By Amy Yarnall
Logan Heights—Nativity Prep Academy has received an endowment of $100,000 to benefit its scholarship program. The privately-funded college prep school received the endowment through the Endow San Diego initiative of the San Diego Foundation.
“The endowment for Nativity Prep is a great example of the power of an endowment,” said Bob Kelly, president and CEO of the San Diego Foundation. “This money will provide a financial base for student scholarships well into the future. The Endow San Diego initiative is designed to build permanent endowments to improve the quality of life in San Diego’s communities.”
The $100,000 gift comes in two increments, with $50,000 gifted in December 2005 and an additional $50,000 to be received in March 2006. This $100,000 gift brings the schools’ total endowment to $500,000. The endowment was established in July 2005 with a gift of $300,000 from Lebherz Insurance Services, and $100,000 in September from Hoehn Motors.
The San Diego Foundation is a non-profit, community-based organization whose mission is to improve the quality of life in San Diego through philanthropy.
- The Southern Cross, February 2006Show Less >
Programs Give Barrio School Students Hope for Bright Futures
The Southern Cross (February 2006)
San Diego—The barrio area of San Diego can be a place of very little hope for many of its residents, but not for the students of Nativity Prep Academy - a college prep middle school for underserved children in southeast San Diego.
Eighth-grade students have completed testing and are currently in the interviewing process for entrance to Catholic, private and charter high schools in San Diego. Those motivated students are excited at the prospect of what lies ahead for them. With lives full of challenges both at home and in their communities, these students have been working a minimum of ten hours each day at school to overcome gangs, violence, drugs and poverty. They have learned that commitment to education, discipline and personal responsibility are the keys to success; and are willing to make sacrifices in order to become leaders rather than victims.
The intensive experiences, of the sixth- through eighth-grade program on the Nativity Prep Academy campus is designed to give students the tools and confidence they will need to succeed in college-preparatory high school programs. However, they do not simply prepare their students and turn them loose to succeed.
Graduate Support is a critical element to Nativity Prep’s overall program. Nativity Prep Academy currently has 15 graduates in the ninth grade attending nine local high schools: Cathedral Catholic, Saint Augustine, Marian Catholic, Academy of Our Lady of Peace, The Preuss School UCSD, High Tech High, High Tech High Media Arts, High Tech High International, and San Diego High School.
All Nativity Prep’s graduates are offered ongoing support in order to take full advantage of their educational opportunities. The director of Nativity’s Graduate Support Program connects with each graduate by visiting them at their schools, meeting formally with graduates’ families and teachers, sending out monthly newsletters and facilitating graduates’ access to necessary academic, social and health services. In addition, there are a handful of graduate events spread throughout the year. Graduates may return to Nativity every day if they wish and attend study hall to receive tutoring from teachers and volunteers, all free of charge. They may work part-time in the summer at the school as well as have help accessing other summer opportunities in and around San Diego.
- The Southern Cross, November 2004Show Less >
With Long Hours and Catholic Values, Inner-City School Changes Lives: Nativity finds success following Jesuit model
The Southern Cross (November 4, 2004)
Teacher Frank Penney reviews the work of Nativity Prep eighth graders Andy Navarette and Jennifer Damian
Logan Heights—Faced with a 12-hour school day and a 6-week mandatory summer school, it’s no wonder Luis Castaneda was hesitant to enroll at Nativity Prep Academy in Logan Heights.
“I kinda didn’t want to at first because of the hours,” the 14-year-old said. “But there’s more to do at this school, and I’ll have better chances of going to college.”
If standardized tests are accurate reflections, Luis and his classmates certainly are increasing their chances of attending college.
Most scored below their grade equivalency in math, reading and language when they entered Nativity in the fall of 2001, and now 80 percent test at or above the national average for students in their demographic group.
“This is one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Diego,” said Erica Daniel, Nativity’s director of development. “We try to break the cycle of poverty and crime by keeping them here to study and participate in sports. It really keeps them off the streets.”
The privately run Catholic school’s extended day keeps students focused on academics and extracurricular activities, rather than television or gang violence.
Luis got used to the extended school day, which includes a study hall period for him to start and sometimes finish his homework before he goes home.
“It’s OK, because we get to do art and PE,” he said. “We don’t have to sit around in our desks. The teachers get us moving.”
University of San Diego alum David Rivera founded the school in 2001 with volunteer teachers and 20 fifth-graders. He used as a model a Jesuit school opened in New York City in 1971.
The volunteer teachers, coming from the Midwest, the South, the Northeast and San Diego, receive a small stipend and free tuition at USD as they work toward their master’s degree in education. The school now runs from sixth through eighth grades and, while it has no formal ties to the Diocese of San Diego, students learn the Catholic faith and walk to Mass at Christ the King Parish every other Friday.
An eight-member board of directors chaired by Dr. Richard Kelly, President emeritus of USD High School, plans and makes decisions to help ensure the school’s long-term success.
Private donations fund the school, which does not charge its students tuition. More than one-third of all Logan Heights residents live below the federal poverty line, according to the 2000 census, and almost all Nativity Prep students qualify for free or reduced school lunches. Eighty-two percent of the students are Hispanic, and 17 percent are African-American.
The majority of students are either being raised by one parent or by a relative who is not the child’s biological parent, said principal Brendan Sullivan, adding that most of the adolescent boys do not have positive male role models in their lives.
The 58-student Nativity Prep employs three “master teachers” in addition to its five volunteer teachers, offering students a 7:1 student to teacher ratio. This individual attention, along with the extended school day, helps explain why Nativity students excel Sullivan said. Their attendance rate is 98 percent, three-fourths of the students earned A’s and B’s in all subjects for the year, and according to standardized test, students in all grades averaged 2.2 years of progress over the past year.
“The environment here allows the faculty to motivate the students to focus on their studies in a way they wouldn’t have in a public school,” said Mary Beth Snodgrass, development coordinator. “A lot of them recognize that it will provide them with the opportunity to go to college.”
She recalled once hearing a student say, “I want to go to a school where they won’t think I’m a freak for wanting to study.”
The academic program at Nativity Prep includes instruction in math, science, religion, language arts, social studies and physical education. Each classroom has five computers. Extracurricular activities include inter-scholastic sports and a mentoring program where a student meets with a young adult professional once a week.
USD’s Dean of Education, Paula Cordeiro, said Nativity’s combination of a skilled staff and a laser-sharp focus makes her wish that all urban parents had the option of choosing such a school.
“They’re doing it all right,” she said. “You don’t see that in many urban schools.”
“Everyone who works there, along with the students and parents knows what the focus is,” Cordeiro continued. “It’s all about catholic values being core to learning. When you look at which urban schools have high academic achievement, its schools that have a focus.”
Cordeiro serves Nativity Prep as one of more than a dozen advisors, providing consultation and advice on an as needed basis.
One recent school day, sixth-graders were writing stories illustrating the concept of temptation after reading about Adam and Eve; seventh graders were learning about Islam; and eighth graders were discussion the 2004 presidential election in social studies.
Sixth-grader David Goodall, after writing his story about temptation said the biggest differences between Nativity Prep and his former school are the length of the school day and the inclusion of religion in the curriculum. Like Luis, David was hesitant to attend the school.
“I didn’t really want to come here, but when I came here and saw how they did things, I wanted to stay,” he said. David wants to be a scientist, and he said he’s enjoying studying of geology.
His teacher, Xochitl Miramontes, is in here second year at Nativity. Unlike her colleagues, Miramontes grew up in Logan Heights. She received her bachelor’s in Literature from the University of California, San Diego, and has worked with young people at Christ the King Parish.
“I thinking teaching here is a good way to give back to the community,” she said. “I really enjoy working with the students here and seeing their development.”
A desire to give back to the community is what draws most to work at Nativity Prep.
Sullivan, who is starting his third year as principal, began his teaching career at a Jesuit school in Baltimore that follows the same model.
“I have a passion for teaching underserved students,” he said. “I like the challenge of it, and it’s essential work. It’s vital.”
Some of his biggest challenges at Nativity include the turnover of volunteer faculty, who generally serve for two years; the long-term financial instability of the school; supporting adolescent boys who have no positive male role models in their lives; educating parents on the importance of education.
“We’ve done a lot of things in these three years, but we have miles and miles to go,” he said. “Sometimes I feel getting there is like sprinting with a parachute on.”
- San Diego Union-Tribune, June 2003Show Less >
Good Time Is Had in Memorial Park: Juneteenth marked with dance, food, music
San Diego Union-Tribune (June 22, 2003)
By Ray Huard
Children from Nativity Prep Academy performed a hip-hop routine yesterday at a Juneteenth celebration at Memorial Park in Logan Heights. (Nelvin Cepeda/Union-Tribune)
Logan Heights—Twelve-year-old Jennifer Damian could hardly contain herself after scampering up a rock-climbing wall and dancing to hip hop music at Memorial Park in Logan Heights yesterday.
“It’s really fun and exciting,” Jennifer said, as friends circled around giggling and shouting out what they liked best about the day’s Juneteenth celebrations.
“Dancing” is what made tile day for Elizabeth Salinas. She and Jennifer were among 18 students from the nearby Nativity Prep Academy who performed hip-hop dance routines as part of San Diego’s Juneteenth celebrations.
“It’s great because it lets us perform and stuff and it’s a community thing,” Elizabeth said.
The Juneteenth holiday was declared after June 19, 1865, when slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned President Lincoln had ended slavery two years earlier. Until then, Texas leaders had refused to acknowledge the Emancipation Proclamation.
Community activist Maxine Wilson started the Juneteenth celebrations in San Diego five years ago. A native of Beaumont, Texas, Wilson said Juneteenth was a time for big-time partying in the South and she wanted to bring some of that exuberance to San Diego.
“I just decided there were a lot of people out here from the South, they knew about the 19th of June, I thought we should celebrate,” Wilson said. ’’To have a good time, eat, listen to the music and energy, that’s what the 19th of June is all about.”
There was no lack of energy in Memorial Park with children darting from food stands to a rock-climbing wall with a quick stop to pick up a free animal balloon from Blinky the Clown.
“I’m loving it,” said Kisha Allen, who came to watch her 11-year-old son, Dante, dance with the Troop Nativity Prep hip-hop group from Nativity Prep Academy. Peggy Ledbetter, a master teacher at Brooklyn Head Start, was using the event to recruit students for her free child-care program. Too many working parents need child care but don’t realize it’s available so close to home, Ledbetter said. With the program’s five-year-olds moving on to kindergarten, “we’re going to have plenty of space,” she said.
Curtis Kirkland, 12, a sixth grader at Nativity Prep, was beyond the Head Start age but said the Juneteenth Party was just what he was looking for this weekend. He said he’s moving into the neighborhood soon and “I want to meet new friends.”
Robert Grimes said it was great to see people celebrate Juneteenth in his community. “As an African-American, Juneteenth has a lot of meaning to me,” Grimes said. But he wasn’t so sure whether many of the children understood it. Nativity Prep student, eleven-year-old Pedro Valdez, could tell him. ’’They freed the slaves and they paid them to work and they (slaves) got a real home,” Pedro said.
- Point Loma Beacon, March 2003Show Less >
Club Raises Funds for Charity
Point Loma Beacon (March 27, 2003)
By Brooks Larios
David Rivera (left) of Nativity Prep Academy; Rillie Bass; and Fran and Matt Dalton enjoy the fundraiser held by the Thursday Club Juniors. The academy was the financial recipient of the club’s annual benefit gala held last month.
Point Loma—The Thursday Club Juniors of Point Loma selected three non-profit charities to receive financial support through their many fund-raising efforts this year.
Through a vote, Nativity Prep Academy, Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, and Dress for Success, an organization that provides clothing and career counseling to unemployed individuals, were selected as the main recipients of club funds, however, only one was chosen as the financial recipient of the annual benefit gala event held last month.
Honoring a different, outstanding charity each year, the club decided this year’s honoree to be Nativity Prep Academy for their efforts in helping children from bad areas receive a structured education with the intent of attending college in the future. Through the event, over $30,000 was raised for the academy.
“We support them primarily through finances, but also we try to partner with them. We get very involved with the groups that we fund-raise for,” said Lynn Devine, member of the Thursday Club Juniors. “We go and do visits, we communicate with them.”
Throughout the year, members of the Thursday Club Juniors meet for social and philanthropic purposes. Besides supporting their three main recipients of the year, they contribute to seniors, cultural and educational programs.
In the 1940s, a few decades after purchasing the property where they still meet in Point Loma on Santa Barbara Street, members of the Thursday Club created the Juniors mainly for their married daughters. To this day, the rules remain that in order to be a member of the Juniors, a woman must be married and under the age of 45.
Once over that age, a woman is eligible to transition from the Juniors into the Thursday Club. Besides age, there are other differences between the Thursday Club and the Thursday Club Juniors. “The Thursday Club Juniors has been a very community-minded group and has had as its focus raising money and supporting local charities,” Devine said.
- North County Times, February 2003Show Less >
David Rivera’s Passion: Helping Children
North County Times (February 20, 2003)
By Edward Sifuentes
Escondido—David Rivera always wanted to help at-risk children, but in his twenties, he himself was lost. Rivera, the son of Chicano activist parents, had abandoned his college education for a high-income job in real estate and a “party lifestyle.” That changed when he realized his life was “spiritually” empty, he said.
“October 16, 1993, was the date that changed my life,” Rivera, 35, told some 125 people who attended the Bravo Foundation’s Latino speakers luncheon Wednesday at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. “I felt so insignificant. I had a lot of money. I had a lot of friends, but I wasn’t happy.”
Rivera, of Logan Heights, left his financially rewarding work in real estate to pursue his true passion: helping impoverished barrio children get a college education. He started by returning to college, graduating from the University of San Diego and then from Notre Dame Law School. “I knew I wanted to focus on children, but that was it,” Rivera said.
Through research and interviews with community leaders, Rivera found there was a dire need for educational programs in the Latino communities east of downtown San Diego. He set out to create his own school to meet the need. After much work raising $250,000 in funding, recruiting a staff of new college graduates and acquiring buildings to house the new school, his project was born.
In September 2001, he opened the doors of the Nativity Prep Academy in Logan Heights. He serves as its president. The tuition-free school focuses on the basics: reading, writing and math. But the school also includes aquatics, theater arts and an 11-hour school day. Nativity Prep Academy also teaches something Rivera calls “character education,” which teaches students self confidence, such as how to speak and stand up for themselves.
The school, which began with a fifth-grade class of about 20, now has 300 students at three sites. Its first class is expected to graduate in 2009. Rivera said he also expects that 80 percent of Nativity Prep Academy graduates will go on to college.
Starting the school not only fulfilled a need in the community, but it also filled a spiritual need in Rivera, he said. “It was finding an identity, finding a purpose in life,” Rivera said. “I’m extremely blessed.”
His father, Jesse Rivera, who helped start the non-profit Chicano Federation, said he was proud to see his son realize his dream. “David has always accomplished whatever he’s set out to do,” he said. “He worked very hard for more than a year to plan the school. I’m very proud.”
The Bravo Foundation’s speakers luncheon is an effort sponsored by the Escondido-based nonprofit to create networking opportunities, civic awareness and honor outstanding Latino community leaders.
- USD Magazine, Spring 2002Show Less >
A Lesson in Faith
USD Magazine (Spring 2002)
By Susan Herold/Photos by Gary Payne ’86
Opening a private Catholic school in one of San Diego’s poorest neighborhoods is a huge challenge, but David Rivera ’96, prefers his challenges giant-sized. His students are labeled “at-risk,” his teachers have no experience, and money is a constant problem. Yet his belief in God gets him through.
A mouse is running loose in the tottering, two story Victorian David Rivera to house his volunteer teachers and it’s got him stumped. A visit from the Orkin man proved fruitless. Unsprung traps, picked clean of their food, taunt him. And now, the pricey electronic device that is supposed to emit a noise and scare away the furry thing, is discovered unplugged. The 10 teachers who live in the house (9 of whom are women) are understandably getting edgy. Rivera is starting wonder what kind of rodent he is up against.
It’s not surprising that a man who chose the most improbable of scenarios as his life’s work - opening a tuition-free, Catholic school in San Diego’s worst neighborhood, with a staff of greenhorn college graduates as teachers is playing David to a Goliath of a mouse. It’s a role he’s been comfortable in since the age of 26, when he decided that slaying giants in the form of social problems was his calling. Turning his back on a six figure income, a hilltop house and a player lifestyle, Rivera did what many consider unthinkable: he adopted a bare bones existence and an unshakable faith in God that compels him to serve others.
He has found himself serving a handful of 11-year-olds left behind by the education system, kids labeled “at-risk” because they are poor, can’t read or act out because that’s the only behavior they know. Rivera opened a one-room school in their neighborhood in September and promised a 12-hour school day, Saturday classes and breakfast, lunch and dinner. He filled the kids’ heads with dreams of a college degree if they committed to the demanding curriculum. He filled their parents’ hearts with hope.
Rivera used his considerable charm and determination to wheedle money and advice from community leaders frustrated with politicians’ empty promises to improve education. He lured graduates from the nation’s top universities to teach in exchange for room and board. He convinced his alma mater, USD, to help his rookie teachers become great teachers by covering most of the cost of their master’s degrees in education.
On this day, like most, Rivera is trying to do too much with too little. In between taking a delivery of donated copier paper and frantic calls about mutant mice, he is looking for more money to keep the small school afloat. The tired van that transports the kids to swim lessons is barely lurching along. About $18,000 in bills comes due each month and he has $6,000 in the bank. A promised big-money donation fell through because of the flailing stock market. Yet Rivera’s not worried. He believes in divine intervention, says God will provide. He has in the past — in October, with $19 in the bank, a donor came through to keep the school going.
“How big of a risk really is it?” says Rivera, now 34, of his decision to walk away from a successful career and try to improve education For San Diego’s poor kids.
“I could get a job doing anything tomorrow. There is no risk in it for me compared to the children and families here who have little hope or opportunity,” he says from outside his “house,” an 8-by.20.foor construction trailer behind the teachers’ home in Logan Heights. An extension cord snaking across rhe dirt backyard provides his electricity; he sleeps on a cot. His salary is $91 a week.
“These kids who come to school and these teachers who traveled a thousand miles to work here for nothing, they are the ones who are taking the risk,” he says. “Talk to them. They’re the story, not me.”
But you can’t tell the story of this improbable school without David Rivera. Those who signed on for his dream of giving low-income kids a first-rate education will tell you the sheer force of his will makes the school possible. “Would this school exist in San Diego without David Rivera? No,” says USD Provost Frank Lazarus. “To start a school like this takes a visionary with an absolute passion for getting it done. David has that.”
A little more than two years ago, Rivera walked into Lazarus’ office with nothing more than an idea - finding a way to help San Diego’s poor kids get a better life. He began by asking Lazarus the same question he had posed to other San Diego community leaders. “What is the biggest need these kids have?” The responses were identical: education.
So Rivera, who has no background in education, decided he would find the worst neighborhood in the city and come up with a better way to reach its kids.
He turned down job offers as an attorney that would have covered the $60,000 he owes for his Notre Dame law degree to move back into his parents’ San Diego house. He covered his bedroom walls with city maps, analyzed census data on income, crime and home occupancy, pored over tables on public school performance. The pushpins rose like a red welt out of Logan Heights, a hardscrabble neighborhood east of downtown, where the annual household income is $18,000 and the population is two-thirds Hispanic.
Rivera had a neighborhood. Now he needed a plan. On a flight to a friend’s wedding in Philadelphia, Rivera leafed through a Parade Magazine and found a story about Nativity Prep schools. Started 30 years ago by a group of New York Jesuits, the Nativity Prep philosophy contends that 12-hour class days, a low student-teacher ratio, college-prep work and a healthy respect for Catholic values will lead at-risk children to success. The concept works: 80 percent of the children graduating from the original Nativity Prep in New York have gone on to college. There are now 40 similar schools throughout the country.
When Rivera’s plane landed, he rushed to a phone booth, looked up the address and found Philadelphia’s school. After meeting the well-mannered kids, who talked about their plans to go to college despite their circumstances, he knew what he wanted to create.
Rivera parked himself in the principal’s office at the University of San Diego High School to learn as much as he could about running a school. He set up meetings with experts like USD’s School of Education Dean Paula Cordeiro and veteran Catholic school principal Brian Bennett. He picked their brains, asked for their help and created an education advisory board.
“There was nothing in San Diego similar to Nativity Prep, a school that deals specifically with very, very low-income students and develops a Catholic relationship,” Rivera says. “I told my advisers about it, and they said, ’Go out and do whatever you need to make it happen.’”
Rivera did. He got help writing a business plan and a needs assessment to get funding for the school, landing 5300,000 in grants - including 550,000 each from San Diego companies Sandicast and Hoehn Motors, and S120,000 from the Catholic Cassin Foundation—on little more than his passion. “I had no idea what a needs assessment was,” Rivera says. “I was embarrassed to tell Dean Cordeiro that when she said I needed one.”
He convinced one of his advisers, veteran Catholic school principal Bob Heveron, to come out of retirement and run the school. Rivera had to hire teachers, bur had no money for salaries. With USD’s help he discovered that AmeriCorps would send him volunteer teachers, college graduates interested in service work for two years. To make the deal sweeter, he convinced Lazarus and USD to pick up most of the tab for the teachers’ graduate degrees in education.
Rivera and his advisers decided the school should start out teaching fifth graders. Eleven-year-olds, they reasoned, had yet to hit puberty, and hopefully were not drawn in by the gangs and drugs and sex that filled their streets. They’d reach the kids through their parents, pitching the school during Mass in neighborhood parishes, posting fliers, going door-to-door. It was last summer, and Rivera wanted classes to begin in the fall.
“People said I should slow down, consider other areas of San Diego, wait,” says Rivera. “But the need was too great. I wanted kids in those seats.”
It was a great plan, a beautiful dream. And it had next to no chance of coming together.
Two thousand miles from San Diego, Tracey Pavey hung up the phone. The Notre Dame graduate just promised Rivera, who she had met via e-mail, that she would teach at his school in San Diego, a city she had never visited, for two years for $35 a week.
Pavey was thrilled. She always had teaching in the back of her mind, although she majored in business. The thought of giving it a try ata new school for low-income kids appealed to her altruism. Her mom was worried about her moving halfway across country; her dad thought she was nuts for pitching a Notre Dame business degree in favor of volunteer work.
But Pavey liked the idea of receiving a USD master’s degree without having to take out a loan. She liked what Rivera told her about living in a big house, a la MTV’s “Real World,” with other college grads who wanted to help poor kids. She liked the idea of putting her business background to use in a start-up education venture.
“I thought it would be cool to be in on building a school from scratch,” says Pavey, who hails from Rushville, Ind. With her dishwater blond hair hanging at her shoulders, her clean-scrubbed face and broad smile, the 22-year-old looks more like a big sister than a math teacher who answers to the name Ms. Pavey.
“I e-mailed and talked to David several times, and he convinced me to move out. I get out here, and there is nothing. No school. We don’t even have a house to live in. I thought, ’Are you kidding me?’”
When Pavey and the other teachers arrived last August, their house - which was the site of several recent drug busts - was still in escrow. The building Rivera hoped to lease for the school had been rented to another tenant. Nativity Prep was to open in six weeks, and it didn’t even have students.
“David told us that everyone in the county knew about Nativity Prep. My first day here, I passed out fliers about the school in the neighborhood, and people were saying ’What new school?’ ” Pavey says. “They hadn’t heard of us. It was frustrating.”
While waiting for escrow to close on the six-bedroom, two-bath house that had been turned into apartments, Rivera scrambled, moving the teachers from donated dormitories at USD to a Best Western hotel. When keys to the $205,000 house were turned over to Rivera, a woman and her five grandchildren were still living in the upstairs flat. The electricity didn’t work in two of the bedrooms. The kitchen and bathrooms were filthy. The transplanted teachers had to rip up carpet and knock down walls, doing much of the work by candlelight.
Teacher Margaret Liegel lived out of her suitcase in the living room with another teacher for nearly three months. Her room was the one occupied by the grandmother, who Rivera didn’t have the heart to evict until she found another place.
“We had to go out and get donations to get the house fixed, and we’re washing walls with cockroaches running out,” says Liege!, who graduated from Boston College. “I think I came out here thinking this is a really cool thing we’re doing, and then it hit you, oh my gosh, what am I doing here?”
A few weeks before classes were to begin, Rivera signed a lease on an empty building in Logan Heights for the school. Seven days before the doors opened, the teachers hosted an open house for interested families. They scattered the few textbooks they had throughout the room to make it more impressive.
“We were rearranging stuff to make it look like we had something,” says Pavey. “We didn’t even have bulletin boards. I thought the families would turn around and walk out.”
They didn’t. Nineteen children enrolled, and Rivera’s school had its first class. Driving through San Diego’s Logan Heights neighborhood, you would miss Nativity Prep Academy unless you knew exactly what to look for. The one-room school is in a squat, concrete structure tucked between warehouses and plywood homes behind chain-link fences. A hand-painted sign with the school’s logo - a white dove soaring over the three-story schoolhouse - is propped up against the curb. The only hint that children may be here is the lone basketball hoop in a corner of the parking lot, which doubles as the playground.
Inside, Liegel clears off some space from a table piled with papers to pore over her notes from her language class. Each day, she and the other teachers prepare incredibly detailed reports of their students’ progress and behavior. When parents arrive at 7 p.m. to pick up their kids, the teachers hand them the reports. They’ll pull a parent aside if they have a concern. It’s just one example of the intensive approach the school takes. “A lot of these kids were sullen when they first came here, they never smiled,” says Liegel, 23, whose glasses and ponytail enhance her rep as one of the “hard teachers among the kids.
“They pretended they were tough because in this neighborhood they had to. Here, though, they can be kids.” If a child is having a bad day or acts our, a teacher’s first instinct is to phone the parents and find out what is going on at home. In one case, a student’s big brother was getting out of prison and moving back into the house; in another, a student missed school because the family lost their apartment and was living at the Sr. Vincent de Paul shelter.
Nearly all the students have special needs - most tested at or barely above third-grade level in reading and math. Some have trouble speaking and understanding English. Every one of them comes from the neighborhood’s public schools, where they were promoted from grade to grade along with the rest of the kids.
To make sure the children get the attention they need, two teachers are always in the classroom; usually there are four or five. Reading, language and math are taught in blocks. Lesson plans are theme-based: a week may focus on insects, so students do math problems, write a research paper and do experiments revolving around bugs.
Religious studies, art history, physical education and social skills also are taught. The kids are awarded points for good behavior - raising their hand, saying please, not talking out of turn - and use the currency to buy computer time, pencils or notebooks.
“It’s almost a 180-degree change from what (schools) these kids came from,” says Principal Heveron, who began his teaching career in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood in the 1960s. “We don’t fault the public schools, because we know the pressure they are under with large class sizes. What we are doing is showing these parents and kids we are committed, that we are in this for the long haul.”
The commitment is evident in kids like Francisco. When he first came to class, he could barely speak English, could not read or write Spanish or English and could not distinguish letters. Half the time he fell asleep in class. The teachers weren’t even sure he attended school because his school records never materialized.
Francisco was tutored privately - an impossible luxury in public school. While the other kids took tests on geography, Francisco, who didn’t know the difference between a city and a state, received private lessons. Today, he speaks English, reads simple books and looks his teachers in the eye when he speaks.
“He has come so far,” says Pavey, who can’t help but worry about the kids when they leave for their homes each night. “I hope we teach them there is more than violence, drugs and gangs, and that they are capable of going on to college. But in the community they grow up in, college isn’t something parents push the kids into.”
Some educators are critical of programs like AmeriCorps or Teach for America, saying that sending inexperienced teachers to tough areas is a recipe for failure, because they are not prepared to deal with the issues of inner-city life.
Liegel counters by saying her classes at USD have filled in any gaps in her teaching methods, and that Heveron and her professors help with the day-to-day problems she faces. She and the other teachers say what they learn in USD classes at night is applicable the next day.
Most important, Liegel says she has learned more about herself from kids like Francisco than she thinks she could ever teach them. “There are times when the kids are driving you crazy and you think, why are they acting like this?” she says. “Then you remember that their father is gone or their brother is in prison. And you are amazed they can even get up and go to school on a regular basis.”
One aspect of the Nativity Prep model that especially appeals to Rivera and his supporters is that the school is an integral part of church and neighborhood. Rivera and the teachers live in Logan Heights, shop at its stores, worship in its churches. The Mission Valley YMCA provides free swimming lessons and summer camps, and county health workers give medical screenings at Nativity Prep.
“No school is just a school, not in the inner-city,” says Heveron, who watched as several Catholic elementary schools left the inner-city for the suburbs in recent years (Nativity Prep receives no financial assistance from the Catholic diocese but does get support from individual parishes). He came out of retirement to run Nativity Prep in part because of Rivera’s relentless enthusiasm, but primarily because he believes in its educational philosophy.
“I inherited 10 enthusiastic teacher volunteers and a warehouse with next to nothing in it,” he says. “Together, and with all the other help we’ve received, we’ve made this school happen. We did it by holding on to the vision David created.”
Rivera wasn’t always such a visionary. For much of his young life, he slid along on his incredible charm, his athletic ability and his good looks. The third of four boys growing up in the Skyline area, he tagged along with his parents, vibrant leaders in San Diego’s Hispanic community who knew political and church leaders on a first-name basis. His father co-founded several nonprofits and helped immigrants find jobs; his mother had a 35-year career as a social worker for the county.
Rivera stayed up late as his dad cooked carne asada for friends. He got used to the bishop dropping by the house after Mass. He loved the social whirl that surrounded his parents, but cared little for the issues. Rather, he dreamed of being a pro athlete and spent his free time playing basketball, baseball and football at Helix High School. Rivera was the kid who showed up early and stayed late for practice. Because of his small size, he often played hurt.
He bounced around between a half dozen community colleges on various athletic scholarships, playing football and baseball. But Rivera’s dream ended when his ankle shattered during a botched play. He left school with a 1.47 GPA and four metal screws in his leg.
“I quit school, came back to San Diego and got a real estate license,” he says. “I wanted to make a lot of money and I didn’t want to work too hard.”
He researched the market and discovered that the west Lemon Grove area of the city had few real estate agents. In his first year of selling, he made $1,200. By year three, his commissions totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. By then he had the hot car, the great house, the big-screen TV the all-night parties. Bur one moment changed his life - when God mapped outr, with absolute clarity, his life’s mission.
“I’ve tried to describe that night before and I never can get it right,” says Rivera of Oct. 16, 1993, the date of what he calls his religious conversion. He falls silent for a few moments before he begins. ” It late at night and I was wide awake, looking out the window and the lights below Mount Helix, just reflecting. I had been all about athletics and wealth up until then and I just wasn’t satisfied. I was just really disgusted with my life.
“And then,” he says, “I was overcome with thoughts that I knew weren’t coming from myself.”
Those thoughts included a blueprint for his future: Graduate from USD, attend Notre Dame Law School, return to San Diego and help its poor children by starring a non-profit venture. That night, Rivera quit his realty job by leaving a message on his boss’s answering machine. That weekend, he sold most of his possessions, put his house up for rent and gave his big screen TV to his stunned brother.
By Monday morning, he was sitting in a USD counselor’s office, asking what it would take for him to get accepted. “USD is the Catholic university in San Diego, and there were certain relationships I needed to develop there,” says Rivera, who hadn’t attended Mass in 11 years but later was a leader in University Ministry.
“I was leaving a certain type or lifestyle and taking on a new one with God at its center. And USD is where I had to be to do it.”
Rivera took the slate of community college classes suggested by the counselor, got good grades and was accepted into USD. In 1996, he graduated with a 3.4 GPA in political science and philosophy. He then focused on getting into Notre Dame Law School - another step in the plan. Placed on the wait list, he campaigned for admission by writing a letter a week to the school’s dean. He even had a going away party for himself at his parents’ house, even though he had no guarantee he would get in.
“Part of me thought David was nuts,” says Mike McIntyre, USD’s director of University Ministry, who ministered to Rivera while he was a student. “The other pan of me thought if anyone could make it happen, Dave could. He doesn’t take no for an answer, and I mean that in the best sense of the term.”
Rivera showed up on the first day of law school orientation and planted himself in the dean’s office. When the dean’s secretary - who opened the dean’s mail - asked Rivera his name, she came over and gave him a hug. “She went and got the dean, who came out after a few minutes and said I was in,” says Rivera. “I had no doubt. It was pan of the plan.”
As always, Rivera has more to his plan. He intends to enroll a new crop of fifth graders this fall, and provide sixth grade instruction to the current group of students. Most of his volunteer teachers are committed to a second year, and 65 college seniors already applied for the new teaching positions.
But Rivera dreams big. He sees the Nativity Prep model eventually expanding from kindergarten through high school, teaching thousands of students and including a residential component. To help make that a reality, this month he will join Nativity Prep adviser Brian Bennett in a proposal before the San Diego Unified School Board to open a K-5 charter school in Logan Heights that, like Nativity Prep, includes a 12.hour school day and volunteer teachers.
With charter school status comes a guaranteed stream of income to run the school, eliminating one of the major hurdles that Nativity Prep now faces. In exchange for the state money, however, the new school could not be designated Catholic, to preserve separation of church and state. Rivera doesn’t see that as an issue. Because the school day is longer than that required by the State, he says religion would be offered as an elective, afterschool activity. “It’s big,” he says of his plan. “We’re talking about thousands of kids in a college prep program in the lowest income areas of San Diego. It will go K-12. Absolutely.”
Part of his plan relies on USD, which Rivera would like to help supply and train more teachers. Aware of the financial burden an expanded program could mean (USD currently covers about $180,000 in tuition costs for Nativity Prep teachers), and wanting to maintain autonomy between USD and Nativity Prep. Lazarus and Cordeiro are looking at ways to possibly expand USD’s assistance if the school grows.
One option may be to partner with a None Dame program that gives students interested in serving low-income areas a crash course in education before they are sent out to teach. Many of USD’s undergraduates join VISTA or the Peace Corps, and Lazarus sees this as a way for them to serve their local community (several USD seniors have applied to teach at Nativity Prep this fall). Alternative means of delivering the master’s curriculum to the teachers also may be considered.
Lazarus is cautious about the loss of independence that comes from a charter designation, as well as the Catholic identity issue. Yet he says the Nativity Prep model is so vital to inner-city kids that it must carry on. “Will USD continue to support David whenever it can, in organizational as well as personal resources? Yes,” says Lazarus, who first became familiar with Nativity Prep through a school in his former hometown of Milwaukee. “There comes a time and place where people have to decide where they stand on education, and you have to do what it takes to make it happen. This is that time.”
If the charter designation isn’t granted, Rivera says with all earnestness that he isn’t worried. He says the Nativity Prep concept will carry on, because it works and because there are enough talented people supporting it. As he has in the past, he says God will see to it that the children will be taught.
In an uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty, Rivera wonders aloud if he might not be the best person to lead the school. He admits he gets easily distracted by the little things—mousetraps and copier paper. He worries that he doesn’t know enough about education, that his expertise lies more in raising money, raising hope. His humbleness refuses to let him take credit for what he has created. “’I think if I went away someone would come in and pick up the slack and do a better job,” he says.
“’This isn’t thriving because of me, it’s thriving despite me. The spirit is leading this and it has a life of its own. I’m just going with the flow of what the spirit wants me to do.”
- Los Angeles Times, February 2002Show Less >
School Offers Grueling, Rickety Ride to Success: Without much money, Nativity Prep determines to help students who might otherwise fail
Los Angeles Times (February 19, 2002)
By Deborah Sullivan Brennan
David Rivera, who founded Nativity Prep Academy in a former industrial building in east San Diego, talks in the yard with teacher Caroline Sekula and student Eriahna Coward. (Don Tormey, Los Angeles Times)
San Diego—The van that shuttles students from Nativity Prep Academy to their swimming lessons and field trips has logged nearly 200,000 miles and is pushing 20 years old. On the outside, it’s a dun-gray clunker.
On the inside, however, it’s a vehicle of opportunity for 19 low-income kids who might otherwise be languishing below grade level in overcrowded public classrooms.
As school founder and President sees it, the vehicle is emblematic of the cash-strapped, first-year school: both struggling day to day to keep going. Housed in a converted warehouse east of downtown, Nativity Prep is a non-profit Catholic school that aims to take children likely to drop out of high school and prepare them to go to college instead. Its first class of 19 fifth-graders studies 12 hours a day--a rigorous regimen of academic basics, enrichment classes and religion--all free to their families.
“Our mission, our dedicated purpose, is to send these children with little hope and less opportunity on to college,” Rivera said.
The school grew out of a religious awakening by Rivera. The son of Latino community leaders in San Diego, Rivera, 34, eschewed their tradition of service in favor of a six-digit income as a real estate agent.
Living in a seaside condo and indulging in what he called “the sin and vice of youth,” he said he had a religious revelation at 25 and decided to return to school. Rivera studied political science at the University of San Diego and obtained a law degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1999.
Returning to San Diego, he researched schools and children’s programs and finally settled on a model developed by Jesuit priests in New York, who started the first “Nativity” school in 1971. The program emphasized intensive instruction, small classes and extended school days.
Enlisting the aid of his alma mater, the University of San Diego, Rivera resolved to open Nativity Prep.
“He’s an incredible salesman,” said Paula Cordeiro, Dean of USD’s School of Education. “It’s hard not to respond to a well-thought-out initiative that is going to help children who are living in poverty.”
Rivera applied the same passion to his quest for funds, piecing together many small donations and a few bigger grants.
“David is a very charismatic, energetic guy on a mission,” said Nativity Prep board member and auto dealer Bob Hoehn, who has donated about $70,000 to the school.
With Nativity Prep’s principal, Bob Heveron, and its educational consultant, Brian Bennett, both veteran Catholic school administrators, Rivera then recruited teachers through the AmeriCorps program. The school hired 10 recent college graduates. The teachers receive $35 weekly stipends, free tuition toward teaching credentials and master’s programs at the University of San Diego, and free room and board.
Nativity Prep opened Sept. 17, welcoming students who were at least two years below grade level academically and from families earning less than $22,000.00 per year. Students start the day at 7 a.m. with the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, then move on to breakfast, followed by two-hour blocks of language arts and math. Some afternoons it’s theater and art class; other days it’s music or science.
The students take field trips to Mission Bay, conducting experiments with Aquatics Adventure, a nonprofit educational foundation. On a recent school day, the children, some of whom had never attended a science class before this year, reviewed the salinity, phosphate and fecal coliform levels of a water sample they had tested the week before. Margarita Vera said her son Jose seems to watch less television and be more social since he enrolled. She said his old school, with its large classrooms, “is like a general practitioner, compared to a specialist doctor here.”
The 12-hour school days sound grueling, but students say they’re fun. The long days of work and nights of university classes don’t faze the teachers, either. “It’s been exhilarating, humbling, fun,” said teacher Caroline Sekula, 22. School officials plan to expand the program to include sixth grade next year. For now, though, just keeping the doors open each month has been a labor of love and a leap of faith.
This month its reserves are down to a few thousand dollars. “I’m not worried about the funding, because it will come,” Rivera said.
- San Diego Union-Tribune, January 2002Show Less >
Leap of Faith
San Diego Union-Tribune (January 20, 2002)
By Chris Moran
Emily Roebuck, 21, a teacher at Nativity Prep Academy, packed for a trip home for Christmas vacation. At Nativity Prep, school lasts 12 hours a day during the week and four hours on Saturdays, and students are fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (Nelvin Cepeda/Union-Tribune)
San Diego—Opportunity knocked on doors in Logan Heights and Stockton last summer, borne by a 22-year-old Midwesterner three months removed from life as a college student.
The white solicitor with the economics degree definitely wasn’t from the largely Latino neighborhood. But Lisa Martin made an alluring pitch, and in Spanish.
She asked people to send their children to a school with fewer than 20 students. Nativity Prep Academy would have at least two teachers in the classroom, and sometimes as-many as SLX, she promised. School would last 12 hours a day during the week and four hours on Saturday. The school would take care of breakfast, lunch and dinner. The curriculum would emphasize college preparation and Catholic values.
And Martin mentioned something that translates well in any language—this would all be free, gratis.
Martin was there because she had responded to a sales pitch herself to be a teacher at the school.
It came from David Rivera, an upstart University of San Diego graduate whose vision. was an ideal school for underprivileged children led him to trade in a four-bedroom hilltop house and the streaky money of real estate for a trailer without plumbing and the austerity of a pioneer.
Rivera is the 34-year-old son of Chicano activists from San Diego. His parents’ generation participated in movements for fair housing, equal employment opportunity and an end to discrimination. Rivera has gone the more solitary entrepreneurial route in the most high profile civil rights cause of recent years - the education of the urban poor and minorities.
He needed college-educated people to teach on Market Street, east of downtown San Diego, for $35 a week. In return for a two-year commitment, he pledged to give them a free place to live and cover their tuition and expenses for a teaching credential or master’s degree program.
He got 49 applicants. Ten showed up for this uncertain venture, but there was no school, no teacher’s home and Rivera had not yet lined up USD to train the teachers.
When asked how she knew everything would work out. teacher Caroline Sekula said, “I didn’t really. I just took a plunge. All of us, I think, just took a tremendous leap of faith in coming out here.”
Of course no one could teach until they had students. To find them, Rivera dispatched teachers to canvass the neighborhood, speak at churches and meet community leaders.
They braced for an open-house night to await the results of their door-to-door and pew-to-pew recruiting. They were nervous. Would anyone show?
The panic melted away as families showed up.
Margarita Vera, one of Martin’s recruits, was sold when she entered the warehouse on Market Street that would be the school’s home.
“They already knew the names of my child and myself,” Vera said.
Vera had been concerned about the social environment at her son’s public school, the fights, the lack of civility. Her son was introverted, she said. She could see academic ramifications for Jose, who had to compete with 30 other kids for a teacher’s attention.
But Vera didn’t feel she had a choice. She didn’t work, and her family couldn’t afford Catholic school on the salary her husband received painting trucks. Then she got the house call from Martin.
Rosa Herrera had been waiting for two years to get her son bused out of Logan Heights when she heard about Nativity Prep.
It wasn’t Logan Elementary School that concerned her. It was the after-school latch-key hours. She lives on a block where boys loiter, drink, smoke and sometimes do worse. She knows because her older son was one of those boys until he went to jail. She thought a 12-hour day would be just the thing to keep Adrian, 10, out of trouble.
Still, the choice came with risks. None of Nativity Prep’s teaching corps had taught before, and none had even majored in education.
However well-intentioned, programs that thrust rookies into schools in poor neighborhoods have been criticized because students in these schools need the very best instruction if education is to prove an economic equalizer. Instead. poor children are most likely to attend schools staffed by the least experienced teachers.
Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a reform group that advocates for better schooling for low-income for black and Latino students, said not just any college grad can do what a teacher does. But if volunteer teachers are cream-of-the-crop college grads, she said, they may do as well or even better than first-year teachers with traditional training.
Brian Bennett, a veteran Catholic school principal and an advisor to Nativity Prep, said the low student-teacher ratio at the new school and the training from USD could offset inexperience.
In the end, though, he said parents were being asked to experiment with their children’s education. “These parents look a huge leap of faith,” Bennett said.
On the morning of August 20, escrow closed on a $205,000 house at South 31st Street and Martin Avenue. A house that only hours earlier had been the scene of a drug bust, was the new home of the teachers for Nativity Prep Academy.
Rivera, the founder who had raised more than $300,000 to launch the school, moved into an 8 by 20-foot trailer in back of the house. It’s his office and his bedroom, separated by a shower curtain. He leased property for the new school at 3275 Market Street, and he sealed the teacher-training deal with USD. Amid the challenges of serving 17 students this year, Rivera looks ahead to serving thousands. He sees the current crop of fifth-graders as the leading edge of expansion until they graduate as the class of 2009.
Furthering his commitment, Rivera will play a role in Bennett’s plan to open a 232-student charter school in Logan Heights in September. Bennett will seek San Diego city schools’ approval early next month. It would be Nativity Prep without the religion.
This is a calling. You don’t live in a trailer unless you feel you have a calling or a passion for a cause,” Rivera said, “and that calling is definitely religiously driven. My faith is why I’m here. My faith is why I work so many hours. Seven days a week, with no days off.”
The calling began October 16, 1993, a weekend night like many for Rivera, a 20-something college dropout who was making heady money in San Diego’s real estate market.
Friday night partying had ended early Saturday, and Rivera was alone in his big house. Maybe his activist pedigree compelled some altruism. Maybe the solitude triggered an existential reckoning. There was a void, and what rushed in to fill it was what Rivera calls a religious conversion. It came with instructions: Get a degree from USD, go to Notre Dame Law School, and lead a nonprofit organization to help at-risk children.
At 2 a.m. he called his boss and left a message that he was never coming back to work. Then he beefed up his transcript and grade point average at several community colleges, got accepted at USD and earned his degree. In 1996, he applied to Notre Dame Law School.
When he was put on the waiting list, he campaigned for admission with weekly phone calls inquiring about his status and a series of biographical chapters to supplement the information in his application. Finally, he just packed up, left San Diego and crashed orientation.
Then-Dean, David Link, had been examining Rivera’s epistles. When there was a no-show or two among the newly arrived law students, Link went to his waiting-list files and pulled Rivera’s dossier. In such cases, he said, it was his custom to call admissions and ask, “Do you think this person is still available?” The admissions counselor’s reply: “We’re sure he’s available, because he’s sitting outside your office.”
Law degree in hand, Rivera became a squatter in the principal’s office at University of San Diego High School. Rivera got a desk where he could research how to start a school and tap into Principal Dick Kelly’s contacts.
One was Bennett, a fellow law school graduate, and so began the partnership of two educators trapped in lawyers’ bodies.
Bennett saw Rivera’s proposal as a start-up with spirituality, a nonprofit in the service of literacy. Together they researched where they could do the most good, and the numbers pointed to an area in Logan Heights around Market Street that is 89 percent poor and 68 percent Latino. Average annual income for the families of Nativity Prep is $18,000.
To make the case for the need for Nativity Prep, they documented what they consider the educational neglect of a neighborhood. For example, they concluded that the abysmal test scores at a dozen public schools in the area meant parents have poor choices provided by the government.
Said Nativity Prep Principal Bob Heveron, who has 20 plus years experience in local Catholic schools, “That does bother me as an educator who’s worked most of his life in center cities.”
Nativity Prep Academy borrows from a model started by Jesuits 30 years ago in New York City. Nativity schools specialize in students who are behind academically and from poor families. Rivera said Nativity targeted fifth-graders because he perceives it as the point at which students start selecting “good” or “bad” peer groups. The original Nativity schools took a four R’s approach reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic and religion - in sending 82 percent of its students to college.
The rich have always had their choice of schools. They buy homes new the best public schools or pay tuition at the best private ones.
Nativity’s business plan says inadequate schooling is both the cause and effect of poverty. Its goal is to break the cycle of poverty through academics and character building.
“How do people overcome adversity?” Rivera asked. “Through education and faith.”
Rivera still receives an occasional jolt that raises anew the question of survival. Last month he carried his $91 weekly paycheck to the bank, and the teller told him the school’s account had insufficient funds. He said the $40,000 he raised later in the month should carry me school through the end of this month. After that is a question.
The stock market plunge exacerbated by September 11th caused a major donor to renege on a six-figure pledge. He said Nativity will need to come up with $120,000 to finish the school year.
Five months into it, the teachers now talk about the comfort of routine, one that involves 60 hours a week in classes as teacher or student or even as they cook preparing dinner for the students. Some split their volunteer teaching time between Nativity and other schools in the area - Logan Elementary, St. Jude’s Academy and a science education group called Aquatic Adventures. They knew it would be a lot of work, but they came from Notre Dame, Boston College and Colgate, schools that emphasize service.
After their workday, the teachers carpool to classes at USD, where they’d be paying thousands of dollars a semester for books and tuition were it not for their affiliation with Nativity. They say they apply their lessons learned in lectures the very next day.
Except for the length of the day and the religion, the academic schedule at Nativity Prep looks similar to that of other schools. After breakfast and a quick prayer meeting, there’s a two-hour language arts block. Then there’s two hours of math and after lunch. there’s a half hour of religion, and depending on the day, science, social studies, Spanish, theater or physical education.
Nativity’s leaders based the curriculum on state standards and private and charter-school successes. They chose books from state-approved publishers. Since about 60 percent of the students live In Spanish-speaking homes, the reading program is geared toward language acquisition.
What the kids and parents seem to like best about Nativity is its size and personal attention. Andres Navarette, 10, who went to school in National City last year, said at his new school, “the teachers are younger, and we get to do stuff like plays.” Every student was involved in the holiday pageant put on last month for parents.
Teachers are able to have one-on-one discussions after instances of mischief. They also have a yellow tally sheet for each student, on which they quantify conduct. With the accumulation of points come rewards. Brandishing the sheet with a threat to subtract from the total generally gets students to behave.
Nativity has started with the support of experienced educators. USD High Principal Kelly’ is on the board of directors. Its advisory board includes Frank Lazarus, vice president and provost of USD; Paula Cordeiro, dean of USD’s School of Education; and Jose Cruz, associate director of the San Diego Literacy Council.
Bennett said Nativity will succeed if parents stay happy and the school can keep committed teachers in one of San Diego’s poorest neighborhoods. “We just want to prove that it works,” Bennett said.
There’s not much evidence of academic success. Heveron said the students have shown consistent growth on the tests supplied with the reading program, but since they started nearly two years behind their grade level, on average, there’s a big deficit to close, “We’re dealing with young minds and this doesn’t happen overnight,” Heveron said. “We see steps, not leaps.”
- The Southern Cross, October 2001Show Less >
Catholic Volunteers Bring Education Experiment to San Diego’s Inner City
The Southern Cross (October 25, 2001)
By Joyce Carr
Volunteer teacher Tracy Pavey helps a fifth grader at the new Nativity Prep Academy, which opened in Logan Heights on September 17th.
San Diego—Twenty fifth graders at the new Nativity Prep Academy off Market Street gathered on September 17 around a table - adorned with a fountain, cross and American flag - to pray for their safety in the wake of terrorist attacks.
On September 18, Jesuit Father Eduardo Samaniego, pastor of Christ the King Church, blessed the school, pupils and teachers, asking them to pray for victims of the September 11 attacks on their country and for American Muslims threatened by hate crimes. The priest also urged the class to pray for those who have organized and funded the academy.
That process involved two years of homework by local educators and community leaders, who learned that poor children are 56 times more likely to be educationally neglected than their middle and upper-class counterparts, and that education is the key to correcting this inequality, according founding director David Rivera.
The solution? Form an independent Catholic organization and offer a tuition-free education designed to lift pupils out of poverty with a 12-hour school day, free meals, tutoring, health services, field trips, camping and parent education.
Preparations for the academy’s September 7th opening included forming a steering committee and governing board, and enlisting local partners and advising agencies.
The tuition-free school at 3275 Market Street is funded by grants and by private and corporate donations. Ten teachers are volunteering two years of service at the site in exchange for a no-cost master’s degree and credential in education from USD.
Public school students were recruited through home visits, parent meetings and announcement sat Christ the King Church and St. Jude Shrine.
During the first week of school, the pupils took diagnostic tests to determine their grade and skill levels in subjects, as well as their learning styles.
The class of Hispanics and African-Americans unanimously told The Southern Cross they enjoy their one-room school. “It’s cool because the teachers help you,” says Sylvia Esquivel, adding that she likes to dissect frogs in science classes, her favorite subject.
Robert Porcher says he likes using computers and playing a geography game on a floor map of the United States.
His mother, Robin Porcher of studies, sports and recess and Christ the King Parish, expects Robert “to thrive… in the small class with individual attention and tutoring.”
Rosa Herrera, single mother in St. Jude Parish, enrolled he son Adrian as an escape from the gang activity in her neighborhood.
Math instructor Tracy Pavey, a Notre Dame graduate in business administration, exchanged a future in the corporate world for volunteer work. “I thought I would try teaching poor children who need more love, understanding, and attention,” she says. “They will teach me more than I will teach them. Like appreciating the simple things in life—the three meals a day we take for granted.”
Working with poor Hispanic children motivated language arts instructor Margaret Liegel to volunteer. The Boston College graduate, who has lived in Mexico and studied in Ecuador, will also teach English as a Second Language to the parents.
“It’s exciting to see the interaction between the teachers and pupils,” Rivera says. “You can see them building long-term relationships.”
The academy’s 12-hour day includes daily classes in religion, ethics, and values. The lengthy school day also includes social studies, sports and recess and concludes with dinner and 990 minutes of tutoring by USD students who receive college credit for their services.
Pupils will receive three daily meals through the federal Free Lunch Program.
The academy is one of 40 schools nationwide modeled after the first Jesuit Nativity Mission School in New York City’s lower East Side, founded in 1971. Today nearly 90 percent of that school’s graduates enroll in college—a goal the local academy hopes to reach.
Nativity Prep will eventually enroll pupils in grades 5-8, adding an additional grade each year.
Although the institution promises a quality education, Rivera notes an ongoing need for funds to cover this year’s $7,000 per pupil cost (including building expenses) and to purchase another house for 10 more teachers next fall. Also needed are 12 new computers and free or discounted labor or contractors and electricians.
Meeting these needs will help founding advisor Brian Bennett’s hopes become a reality—that the school “will proved that parents and low-income communities can benefit from choices in education.”
- San Diego Daily Transcript, November 2001Show Less >
A New School’s Formula For Success: Nativity Prep Academy targets low-income, at-risk students
San Diego Daily Transcript ( November 1, 2001)
By Michelle Cadwell Blackston
These students at Nativity Prep Academy take part in specially designed education programs such as rational problem solving and critical thinking.
San Diego—David Rivera spent a year studying San Diego schools. From Census data, he color-coordinated a map of Logan Heights neighborhoods with poor-perform students and families living below the poverty level to find the area most challenged.
He sought to open a school that would focus on small class size, intensive academic programs and college prep education. Rivera also wanted the school to be Catholic and no-cost to the families.
Nativity Prep Academy opened in September in Logan Heights with 24 low-income, at-risk children in grade five. The school will eventually expand to include all middle school grades and high school.
It took a tremendous amount of legwork on behalf of Rivera and others to open the school, hire and train teachers, and enroll students, Through the University of San Diego, where Rivera received his undergraduate degree, and AmeriCorps, the school landed 10 volunteer teachers for two years. USD is giving the teachers, most of whom are recent college graduates, free enrollment in the master’s degree program in the education department as well as credentials to teach in California. They also teach at neighboring Logan Elementary and St. Jude’s Academy part of the time to learn to identify at-risk children.
Rivera, a graduate of Notre Dame Law School, is Nativity Prep’s fund raising coordinator and said it’s challenging just getting in the potential donor’s door.
“The idea sells itself,” Rivera said. “Getting in front of donors after 9/11 is very difficult. All of the investing is going back east.”
The Nativity model originated in New York City from Jesuit priests who sought to end the cycle of urban crime, drugs and poverty during the 1950s. The year-round schools maintain 12-hour days from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., small classes, daily tutoring, prevention programs and classes; on Saturdays. Nativity schools around the country send 90 percent of their students to college.
To get his idea off the ground, Rivera approached Brian Bennett, who worked on the state school voucher initiative and opened schools in underserved areas, throughout California. Bennett previously was a school principal as well as an attorney. Bennett and Rivera recruited Bob Heveron to be principal and other community leaders to support the novel educational approach including Robert Hoehn of Hoehn Motors, who donated $60,000 to the cause.
The curriculum involves teaching basic social skills such as telling the truth, following instructions, controlling anger and disagreeing politely. It also instills rational problem solving and critical thinking. In addition, the students are fed three meals a day.
“They’re really good kids and have a genuine interest in being successful,” Bennett said.
He also said it’s important for the teachers to interact with the families and community members who become the voice of the school. As part of the AmeriCorps program, all 10 of the volunteer teachers live a block from the school in a rehabilitated house for free.
Before the school opened, the teachers canvassed the neighborhood for three weeks to talk to families about the program and enroll students. The school has rolling admissions and accepts new students on a need basis.
Most of the families in the area are Hispanic, Rivera said, and have yearly incomes of about $20,000. The transient nature of the community makes it difficult for traditional public schools to keep track of the students, he said. With only 24 children, Rivera knows the students’ families, where they live and their financial situation.
Principal Heveron said the students are typically at least two years below their grade level on tests and at the 20th percentile in both reading and math. They plan to test the students to see their progress each year and assess what programs are successful.
The San Diego Literacy Council donates books and reading materials to the schools. San Diego-based company Sandicast gave $75,000 before the school was open. The school collaborates with other nonprofit organizations including local parishes, Girls & Boys Town for at-risk training, Family Health Centers for on-campus health care and Big Brothers and Big Sisters mentor programs.
The school now needs to raise money to sustain programs, Rivera said, and keep the vision moving forward.
“Child poverty in San Diego has doubled in the last 20 years,” Rivera said, adding that he surrounds himself with experienced and “talented people who are as dedicated as he is to helping children succeed.”
“There will always be young people with needs,” Heveron said. “We’re providing an option to people who do not have options.”
- Notre Dame Lawyer, July 2002Show Less >
Creating Hope and Opportunity
Notre Dame Lawyer (July 2002)
By David Rivera ’99 J.D., with Katie Evans ’98
Many students attend Notre Dame Law School intending to receive an education that will enable them to effect some positive change in society. Four years ago, when I chose to attend NDLS, I was no different in my desire to make a difference. But although I had set my heart on creating some sort of a nonprofit organization that would improve the quality of life for at-risk children, I didn’t have a clear vision of what, exactly, would make the greatest impact. So, like all lawyers confronted with a new problem, I set out to research the issue. As the facts unfolded before me, it became increasingly evident that education had the greatest potential to create a sense of hope as well as tangible opportunities for children living in poverty.
My hometown of San Diego, California, is often referenced to as ’’America’s Finest City.” Reasons for this designation abound, but climate and opportunity top most of the lists that rate such things. When it comes to climate, I can’t quarrel with those who place San Diego near the top of their lists. But when it comes to opportunity - particularly, economic opportunity - the rankings don’t tell the entire story.”
Since 1980, San Diego County has grown much faster in economic terms than both the state of California and most of the rest of the nation, with the economy doubling over the last two decades. Despite a strong population surge during that time, San Diego’s per capita economic indicators rose by 32 percent. Our economy and workforce have both prospered remarkably - on average.
A recent and more thorough analysis of San Diego’s economy suggests that fewer and fewer individuals benefit from the community’s overall prosperity. During the same period that saw impressive growth, the county also experienced a dramatic increase in income inequality and in the number of people living in poverty. The middle class has declined from 80 percent of the population to 60 percent, and the income gap between the wealthiest and poorest individuals has grown by 30 percent. Today, over 900,000 people in San Diego County - 32 percent of the population - live in poverty.
Even more tragic are the statistics regarding our children. The number of children living in poverty is growing three times faster than both the national average of all persons living in poverty and the average of senior citizens living in poverty. In one generation that number has increased from 16 to 29 percent of the children in the county - a staggering 300,000 children are living in poverty.
Of particular significance is the plight of abused and neglected children. Children in extreme poverty are 18 times more likely to be sexually abused and 25 times more likely to live in otherwise endangering circumstances. San Diego County receives 6,000 child-abuse calls each month, removes 20 children each day from their homes and supports 7,000 children in foster care. But children brought under the protection of the state don’t fare much better. Most foster children drift through seven to 11 homes - and sometimes staying in as many as 30 different homes before leaving the system at age 18. Fully half of San Diego’s foster children do not graduate high school - a rate almost 25 percent higher than for foster children nationwide - and will become homeless by the age of 20.
Children in extreme poverty are also 56 times more likely to be educationally neglected, and the condition of California’s education system exacerbates an already serious problem. Despite recent reforms, California remains last or next-to-last among the states in students per teacher, per principal, per counselor and per librarian. The state spends 20 percent less per pupil than the national average. Local newspapers provide a nearly constant stream of anecdotes about angry parents, low teacher morale, under-performing schools and apathetic legislative responses to these serious problems.
But these statistics and news stories tell only part of the story. As compelling - even daunting - as these facts are, it is difficult to fully comprehend the depth of the problems facing San Diego’s youth. My spirit nearly breaks when I think about the overwhelming burdens our broken systems force our children to shoulder.
Faced with the results of all of my research, but bolstered by my conviction to do something to solve this overwhelming problem, I began searching for answers. An article in PARADE magazine last summer sparked my interest in a unique educational system that simultaneously addresses the material, educational, spiritual and health needs of disadvantaged children.
The article described an educational model consisting of extended school days and Saturday school, small classes of seven to 12 students, daily tutoring and long term mentoring programs. Beyond tending to the academic needs of its students, this model also incorporates other services into a comprehensive program designed to alleviate the difficulties inherent in an underfunded, often inaccessible and fragmented social-services system. After reading that article, I committed myself to opening just such a school, Nativity Prep Academy of San Diego, because I believe that it addresses the causes, rather than just the effects, of childhood poverty.
Nativity schools trace their roots to Jesuits who counseled poor Puerto Rican youths in New York in the 1950s, believing that early intervention and prevention could save disadvantaged children from the siren calls of poverty, drugs and death that abounded on the streets around their impoverished homes. The Jesuits believed that, by challenging and encouraging young people to reach their full potential, they could counter the overwhelming pressures to become involved in a destructive “street” culture.
The Jesuits opened their first formal Nativity school in 1971. Using both remedial and enrichment programs, as well as featuring a small student-faculty ratio, the school provides its elementary-school-aged students with highly focused educational opportunities. Over the last few years, 90 percent of Nativity’s students have gone to college. Thirty more schools have opened across the country using Nativity’s model.
Imagine! A place where a disadvantaged child can be nurtured, loved and given the opportunities and tools to turn dreams into reality. A place where a poor child can feel safe. A place where a neglected child is encouraged to be creative, where that child’s faith can grow and flourish. Most of us experienced this in our own homes. Most of us take for granted that we have the ability to provide this type of environment for our own children. For many children in my community, however, such experiences have been the stuff of imaginations rather than real experiences - until now.
When Nativity Prep Academy of San Diego opens in the fall of 2001, we will employ the core elements of the proven Jesuit model and will focus on providing hope and opportunity co children in crises. Bur we’ve also expanded on the early Jesuit model to some extent, having added a high school component, to serve grades 5 through 12, and by providing onsite nutrition and health services, as well as some residential care.
Nativity’s mission promotes the academic, moral and social growth of at risk students through the rigors of an intensive curriculum, heightened expectations and a highly structured environment. When they graduate, I am confident that our students will have the resources and confidence to compete successfully at all levels.
The project has proceeded with amazing speed. Much like the grace of God, helping children proves to be irresistible for many people. Thanks to the assistance of community leaders and financial supporters, Nativity Prep Academy of San Diego is becoming a reality. Currently, dozens of volunteers - college interns, attorneys, doctors, urban school teachers - conduct research raise funds and help us develop valuable links to important community resources.
Even with these early successes, many people ask me why I would devote my life to this cause. My friends call me a “tragic optimist” --"optimist” because I know, despite the scope of this project, that Nativity Prep will succeed, but “tragic” because of the breadth of the problem I’m trying to solve and because of the vast amounts of resources required to succeed. I can respond only by saying that r have found my passion in helping those in need. And when I reflect on my life, I realize that this passion has grown from a seed planted by my parents a (long time ago and has been more fully formed by experiences I have had along the way.
Both in their careers and in their social lives, my parents advocated for San Diego’s poor and disenfranchised. My earliest memories are of attending community organizing meetings, fundraising events, rallies and numerous other athletic, church and political activities. Through their words and their works, my parents taught me the value of service.
My return to the nonprofit service world came, however, after a slow process of realization and self-discovery. Through trial and error, I sought fulfillment in many different activities. Intercollegiate athletics and a six figure corporate income as a real estate broker did not provide me with the inner satisfaction that I thought they would, although both greatly shaped my character and work ethic. A few years submerged in the subculture of drugs and alcohol, understandably, resulted in even greater inner conflict, strife and confusion. Only through embracing my faith in Christ did I find the inner peace I so desperately sought.
Certainly, many individuals embark on a path to service without similar experiences. But I feel blessed finally to have reached a stage where a meaningful relationship with Christ has replaced emptiness and disconnectedness. I now understand that the lack or presence of popularity or possessions did not prevent me from truly living. Rather when I followed my heart’s passion, I began to experience a more fulfilling life.
I also learned that I needed more education to learn how to help give others the same wonderful opportunities my parents had given me. So I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of San Diego and then chose to attend Notre Dame Law School.
My law school education gave me the practical knowledge I needed to succeed in my endeavor - particularly, a core body of information required to address the vast array of legal and business issues I faced daily. A Notre Dame law degree also adds a special legitimacy in the eyes and minds of potential benefactors and collaborators. And through friendships formed at Notre Dame with classmates, faculty and alumni, I have had tremendous opportunities to develop, discuss and refine this vision.
Even University President Emeritus Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, has supported our effort. “I was delighted to learn that you are establishing a series of schools for at-risk children… I think it is wonderful… This endeavor is badly needed if we are ever to alleviate the cycle of crime, drugs, and poverty that plague our inner cities. Keep up the good work and be sure of a daily prayer from here for all success.”
I have truly been blessed. My family, my friends and my Notre Dame family have been tremendously supportive of me and of this effort. I cannot imagine a greater manifestation of God’s plan for me, of complementing his ways with my talents and life experiences. God has blessed me with the gift of hope and with a wonderful opportunity to work toward making my dream a reality), And as I work toward fulfilling this dream, some of San Diego’s most impoverished children may find hope and opportunity in their lives as well.
