{"id":203760,"date":"2026-03-24T11:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T11:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/203760\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T11:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T11:07:07","slug":"south-florida-high-schools-first-graduating-class-turning-opportunity-into-life-changing-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/203760\/","title":{"rendered":"South Florida high school’s first graduating class turning opportunity into life-changing success"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cristo Rey Miami High School<\/a> is celebrating a major milestone \u2013 its very first graduating class.<\/p>\n

And their achievements are extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Arianna Salazar, a senior, was accepted to 14 colleges and has been awarded more than $1.3 million in merit scholarships.<\/p>\n

“Every school, all the money was adding up,” Salazar said.<\/p>\n

Alyssa Charles was accepted to 15 colleges, earning more than $1.2 million in merit scholarships.<\/p>\n

“All the hard work I’ve been doing is paying off,” Charles said.<\/p>\n

Gambia Whiting was accepted to 14 colleges and received more than $1.2 million in merit scholarships.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been getting acceptances after acceptances,” Whiting said.<\/p>\n

Together, they’re part of Cristo Rey Miami<\/a>‘s Millionaires Club.<\/p>\n

“It was mind blowing,” said Deonte Green, Cristo Rey Miami’s School Principal. “However, I knew from the beginning, and I believed in every student, and I knew they were going to achieve success.”<\/p>\n

Senior class has earned more than $20 million in scholarship offers<\/p>\n

That success goes far beyond a few students. Collectively, the senior class has earned more than $20 million in scholarship offers.<\/p>\n

School leaders say it’s driven by a unique model.<\/p>\n

“We combine faith formation with rigorous academics and real-world work experience,” Green said. “Our students come to school here academically for four days, then one day a week they are deployed to leading companies in Florida.”<\/p>\n

The students cover the cost of tuition though the work programs.<\/p>\n

“Every one of these young ladies that we spoke with will be the first person in their family to attend college. How monumental is that?” CBS New Miami’s Najahe Sherman<\/a> asked. \u00a0<\/p>\n

“For our families, that literally breaks cycles for them,” Green replied.<\/p>\n

It’s proof that with opportunity, the future can change.<\/p>\n

Students from Cristo Rey Miami’s first graduating class have been accepted to more than 113 universities across 36 states.\u00a0<\/p>\n

School leaders expect the Class of 2026 to reach a 100% college acceptance rate by May.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cristo Rey Miami High School is celebrating a major milestone \u2013 its very first graduating class. And their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[113,123,125,124,1064,807],"class_list":["post-203760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-education","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami-dade","tag-south-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}