Matt Powell figures the sisters did it once by sheer determination and prayer power. He hopes they can again.

Powell, president of De La Salle North Catholic High School in Portland, invited all the women religious in the area to tour the new and innovative school this month. He meant to thank them for past service and recruit them for future work.

“From before the turn of the last century to the 1960s, these women religious built up all these Catholic schools in Portland,” he says. “How did that happen? By the prayers of these women. We’re starting the next phase, and we need their prayers now.”

About 30 sisters came for Mass, lunch and presentations on the school’s expansion plans and unique curriculum. Rigorous academics and faith formation take up four days per week. An office internship — education in the work world — takes up day five.

Some of the 192 students — boys in ties and girls in dresses — gave the sisters tours and discussed their lives at De La Salle North, where the student-to-teacher ratio is 17 to 1.

“It’s not like any other high school in Portland,” said Mariana Lindsay, a junior. “I can go to any of the teachers and ask questions. I could go to any of my classmates and say hello and they know me. I thank De La Salle for letting me be such an integral part of this community.”

Her internships at the University of Portland and Fleishman-Hillard public relations, she says, “have drawn maturity out of me I would not have had otherwise.”

Junior Mary Miller told the sisters that the Christian Brothers who operate the school and the other teachers “love us so much and they work so hard to put us ahead.” Miller lauded the personal attention students get in the classroom.

She started her internship at McMenamin’s Kennedy School and then moved to the law firm Stoel Rives.

On work days, students gather in the school chapel at 7:45 a.m., say prayers and then board shuttle buses. They do not get home until about 6 p.m.

In addition to providing education in life, the internships cover about 70 percent of the school’s operating costs. That means tuition is only $2,200. That’s less than half of other area Catholic high schools and puts a Catholic education within reach of more families.

Students stay longer each day than at other schools and have a longer academic year.

This is the third year of operation for De La Salle. Next fall, it will have four classes. Enrollment will never go over 300, the Christian Brothers have decided.

When it is time for classes to change, there are no bells. Instead, soothing music plays over the intercom. On the walls of the hallway are painted words of moral encouragement: “Accept everyone. Respect all persons. Respond to the poor and overcome injustice.”

Teacher Sue White described for the sisters her method of success with students: “Getting to know them and working around the pluses and minuses.” White’s first-year English class had just read To Kill a Mockingbird and prepared reports.

Scholars from the University of Portland School of Education helped design the curriculum.

Life here is demanding, and some students leave. The junior class started with 74 students three years ago and is down to 50.

“To succeed here, students need to be capable, motivated and interested,” Principal John Huelskamp told a group of sisters.

“This school is not for everybody,” adds Tim Hennessey, director of development.

So far, it is the place for Hennessey. Involved in high-tech sales and marketing for 22 years, he is thrilled to be at a mission-driven institution.

“It has touched my heart,” he says. “This place has reached out and impacted people.”

The schedules can be tricky, because there is more than academics and office work here.

The school has varsity teams in sports such as soccer, volleyball, baseball and softball. Students are about to put on the school’s first play, Our Town. There are retreats and coffee houses, many organized by elected student planners. The junior class is now abuzz about the school’s first-ever prom.

“I am so struck by what is going on here,” says Christian Brother Dominic Berardelli, who came to work at De La Salle from his order’s provincial headquarters in Napa, Calif. “This place is doing something. Some of these kids would not have had such a chance but for this school.”

Brother Dominic tells stories of family strife and students succeeding at surmounting it.

As students handed roses to the visiting sisters, the women saw the master plan for the campus. Within the next year, school officials hope to break ground on a $5.7 million classroom building and administrative office.

Later phases call for a gymnasium, chapel and dining hall. Interior courtyards and landscaped quads are part of the plan.

The school is reaching out to alumni of North Catholic High School, which burned down in the early 1970s and was never rebuilt. One of the walls in the new De La Salle building will be dedicated to the old school and will include memorabilia.

Ten Benedictine Sisters traveled to North Portland from Queen of Angels Monastery in Mount Angel.

“I think this is just wonderful,” said Benedictine Sister Judy Henigin. “I’ve been trying to follow it and will continue to.”

Franciscan Sister Connie Furseth was at first skeptical about the time given over to internships. But her tour made her a believer in De La Salle.

“I think it’s working very well,” says Sister Connie, who taught in the very same building in the mid-1980s when it was Pope John XXIII School. “The students are so proud of themselves. The atmosphere in the school is really suited to kids. I can see they are really working and they are happy and the teachers are happy. They all know they are starting something that is very fine.”

A longtime teacher at nearby Holy Cross School, Sister Connie is an advocate of keeping Catholic education affordable for more families. De La Salle seems to have achieved that, she says.

Franciscan Sister Patricia Novak, who taught at Pope John XXIII School in the early 1980s, entered the building for the first time in 20 years.

“I’m really pleased they are using the facilities,” says Sister Patricia, a veteran of 21 years of teaching and now a vocations director.“The school is really good for the community. And I found the students very eager. They were just so friendly. They are very proud of their place. I could tell good learning was happening.”

Sister Patricia has begun to include the school in her intercessions at evening prayer.

At the Mass, Jesuit Father Peter Byrne suggested that the sisters who taught at schools deserve great gratitude.

He called the school a “thin place,” especially suited to God’s presence because of its fledgling status.

Young people, he said, should be told not just how to live, but how to let go and be in the “thin place” where they can be receptive to God.

Speaking to the students attending the Mass, Father Byrne said of the sisters there, “These women here have made some great music. But you’re going to do it differently. So, let it rip. Give it all you’ve got.”

— Bob Kerns contributed to this report