There was a buzz in the air at North Cambridge Catholic High School yesterday, and it had nothing to do with books or exams.
Tonight is prom night, one more marker of the end of the road for about 120 seniors preparing to leave one of the most innovative parochial schools in the area.
"They have senioritis," said their principal, the Rev. Jose Medina. "I have senioritis."
North Cambridge is one of an evaporating breed: a Catholic school devoted to serving children in the urban core. The financial woes of the Archdiocese of Boston, prompted by the clergy abuse scandal, have forced the closing of some city schools and the consolidation of others. North Cambridge, however, has been a success story.
While the school has been a neighborhood institution for decades, it remade itself five years ago. It adopted a work-study program in which every student works five days a month - one day a week for three weeks and two days the other week. It also adopted a businesslike dress code.
More important, for five years running, every student - every single one - has been accepted into college. That is the school's stated mission and the way it measures success.
Their students defy the odds. Only poor kids need apply. The school considers only those applicants whose families fall below the federal poverty line. While the school is in Cambridge, its students are mostly from Boston, with Dorchester and Hyde Park especially well represented. The school's annual tuition is officially a modest $2,700 a year, but almost all its students receive some form of financial aid. Most of the student body is black, Latino, or Asian.
The school is kept afloat financially by the businesses who hire its students and an aggressive board of trustees, though raising money is a constant struggle. Many of the trustees attended North Cambridge when it was a far different place. Thomas P. O'Neill III, Tip's son, is its chairman. Like his parents, who went there when it was St. Paul's, O'Neill is a graduate.
O'Neill said the school was always working class, home to the students who couldn't afford Catholic Memorial or Matignon.
"We've got a great network of people who happen to be white," he said. "And today those same alums are supporting kids who are exactly the same, but of a different color, and they're proud of the experience."
Medina, who's 39, followed an unlikely path to Cambridge. Born and raised near Madrid, he trained and worked as a civil engineer until deciding to enter the priesthood at 30. After his order shipped him to the United States, he entered graduate school at Harvard, studying education. He taught at North Cambridge in 2001-2002, and after several other teaching assignments he returned this year as principal. He is a tough-love kind of guy, who speaks of his students with great affection one moment, and talks uncompromisingly about standards the next.
"It takes a lot of work to sustain the hope of people," he says, quoting one of his favorite French writers. "Our students get put down by a lot of people, but we're here to say you also have a lot of potential, and that's what we're working on."
Medina teaches physics and advanced placement Spanish, the school's first attempt at a demanding AP program. He says there will be more to come.
"I know they won't do great the first year or two, but I want them to get a sense of what it's like to do college-level work."
As Medina sees it, the biggest challenge his students face is not educational. It is successfully navigating the boundaries of many worlds - Dorchester or Hyde Park, Cambridge, State Street Bank. He says that what some might view as their disadvantages only make them more focused and hungry for success.
"We're not trying to make their lives over," he said. "We're trying to discover something beautiful within the life you have."
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, the Adrian Walker column in the City & Region section on Friday misstated the former name of North Cambridge Catholic High School. The school was previously St. John the Evangelist High School, commonly known as St. John's.
