Espiritu Community Development Corporation's K-12 school

NFL GIVES SCHOOL ANOTHER $1 MIL; January 26, 2008; The Arizona Republic 

The National Football League is showering a small Phoenix charter school with gifts and money, including a check for $1 million…

The school doesn't have such a sunny record with the state. It has never tracked how many of its graduates have earned a college degree.

Last year, only about a quarter of the school's third-, fourth- and fifth-graders passed the AIMS reading test. For four years, the percentage of eighth-graders passing the AIMS reading test has fallen, landing at 38 percent last year…

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CHARTER SCORES SLIDE DESPITE NFL FUNDING-$1 MIL FROM SUPER BOWL GOTNOW-TROUBLED SCHOOL ROLLING; March 24, 2007; The Arizona Republic 

After the Valley hosted its first Super Bowl, in 1996, the NFL left behind a $1 million grant for a fledgling south Phoenix charter school.

Eleven years later, the non-profit Espiritu Community Development Corp.'s K-12 school has more than doubled the size of its campus and its student population. Yet it is struggling to meet state and federal standards in teaching its kids, with test scores dropping and causing the state to intervene.

Its special assistance, on top of state and federal funding, continues to flow. In keeping with NFL policy, Espiritu's school is in line to reap yet another $1 million when the Super Bowl returns to the Valley in February. In August, it also won a low-interest, private $8 million loan, approved by the Phoenix Industrial Development Authority, a committee appointed by City Council members…

Espiritu's owners, Fernando and Armando Ruiz, say they are confident they can turn around student performance along with the campus.

Fernando said the academic problems started a couple of years ago when the school grew by about 200 students in one year…

Today, Espiritu's school has 800 students, and the non-profit Espiritu Corp. receives about $5 million a year in state funds and $350,000 in federal money to operate…

Besides Armando, the staff of Espiritu Community Development Corp. includes his brother Fernando and their extended family members.

Three Ruiz family homes are adjacent to the charter school's campus, along with the headquarters of two additional non-profit agencies the family also operates.

One is called Mary's Ministries Inc., a Catholic organization created to train and support religious missionaries. Mary's Ministries was inspired by visions of the Blessed Mother that the Ruiz brothers' mother began experiencing in the 1980s. Estela Ruiz's visions became more public in the 1990s when she said she began reading messages delivered by the Blessed Mother and temporarily drawing pilgrims to the property…

Until last year, Mary's Ministries owned the land where Espiritu's charter school sits. About $500,000 a year in the charter school's budget went to Mary's Ministries for rent. But last year, the Ruiz brothers, tired of parents and lenders confusing Mary's Ministries with the school, put the land under the ownership of a third non-profit, the Project America Development Co…

Espiritu's AIMS test scores are sliding, and some grades have not reached state and federal standards over the past few years. If the school continues to underperform, the state can change its curriculum and replace its principal, now Fernando Ruiz, and its teachers. It also could shut it down…

The state report, released Wednesday, painted a picture of a school with vague educational goals that offers inadequate teacher training and that suffers from high teacher turnover. Its classes need more thoroughly written curriculum that matches state learning goals and appropriate instructional resources, the report stated…