The way Ivan Salcido sees it, he could easily have followed the path taken by many of his friends from his Boyle Heights neighborhood who fell into gangs, got hooked on drugs or dropped out of school.
The difference for him, he thinks, was attending Cathedral High School, a college-prep all-boys Catholic school northeast of downtown whose graduates attend many of the most prestigious universities in the country.
With his single mother supporting two other children in addition to his grandmother, Ivan could only attend the school because of a tuition award from the Catholic Education Foundation.
The foundation this year provided more than $11 million in scholarship awards to 9,000 students in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
Like Ivan, most are minority, low-income students who increasingly make up the profile of Catholic education in urban centers throughout the nation.
The awards for high school students average about $2,000 annually and cover about 40% of school tuition.
"The tuition assistance actually helped out a lot because if I didn't have it, I'd be going to a public school," said Ivan, 18. "Here, everyone is close, the teachers really care about you, and we get one-on-one time."
On Sunday, Ivan and 450 fellow seniors were honored at downtown's Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels at a reception attended by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony. Virtually all of the students will be going to college; many will be the first in their families to do so.
A recent study by Loyola Marymount University of students who received the tuition awards found that 98% of them graduated from high school and 98% of those graduates continued on to college. The dropout rates for some Los Angeles public high schools, by comparison, are as high as 55%.
Ivan's mother, Alma Salcido, who stopped working to take care of his grandmother, who has Alzheimer's disease, always pushed him to do well in school and keep up his grades.
He said the school, which charges about $7,500 in tuition, taught him the values of being a good man and a good citizen. When he graduates this spring, he expects to attend the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
"I do video production, and I'm also a reporter and cameraman doing news for the school," he said. "I help out with the school plays, filming productions. I don't think I'd be doing this if I were at any other school."
