Derontae Mason’s tale is hard to beat for hard times. Born to a single mother who would do her best to raise six on her own. Father arrested and deported to Nigeria. Bounced from homeless shelter to shelter. Forced to live on the street at 16.
“I slept in playgrounds,” he tells me.
How is it that Derontae Mason graduated Thursday from high school and is headed to college in the fall? What prevented him from becoming another black kid discarded by society?
“I owe a lot to my school,” he says. “The teachers got my head up and kept me moving. They always believed in me. They had my back.”
Derontae is graduating from Don Bosco Cristo Rey, a unique Catholic school that combines rigorous academics with work study. The campus on New Hampshire Avenue in Takoma Park is one of 24 Cristo Rey schools in the nation. Derontae is among 70 in the Washington campus’ first graduating class.
“Our school is specifically set up to serve students like Derontae,” says the Rev. Steve Shafran, president of Don Bosco. “The ZIP code of where you were born should not determine your success in life.”
Derontae and Don Bosco followed parallel tracks, until they intersected.
“I was raised right,” Derontae says. His voice is level, his words careful, his eyes locked on mine. “My mother made us promise not to wind up like her, struggling to pay bills.”
But Derontae struggled with his mother, Wandra Staton. She set high standards and enrolled him in solid parochial schools, such as Holy Redeemer, on New Jersey Avenue, but they fought. Derontae spent months at Sasha Bruce, a nonprofit that takes in kids who have nowhere else to go.
Shafran came to Washington in 2006 to set up his school. He converted an abandoned elementary school behind Our Lady Of Sorrows church into Don Bosco and opened with 100 students in September, 2007. “We are an exclusive school,” he says. “You have to be poor to get in.”
And you have to work. Under the Cristo Rey model, students work in local businesses, who pay the school to support the education. The Jones Day law firm, Georgetown University and Fannie Mae are among dozens of local firms that employ his students. Says Shafran: “We pick students who want to work for it.”
When Holy Redeemer closed, Derontae applied to Don Bosco. He worked in the library at Howrey Law Firm; his mentor, Craig Minerva, helped him apply to college. Yet he struggled: his girlfriend was shot and killed, his grades fell, he moved in with a school mate’s family. He pulled through his senior year.
“I could not have done it without my teachers and counselors,” he says. “They never wavered.”
Derontae is headed to Potomac State College in West Virginia on a scholarship. His goal? “To be a pediatrician,” he says. “I want to help kids, the way people helped me.”
Shafran is hoping to double the school’s size. “We’re still a secret,” he says — a secret that needs to get out.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
