With family and friends dispensing shout-outs, screams and cheers, 58 Country High seniors, the largest graduating class in the Vacaville alternative school’s history, picked up their diplomas, posed for photographs with district trustees, then walked across the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre stage, ready for the next passage in their young lives.
After a 35-minute ceremony Thursday evening, the newly minted graduates, clad in shiny bright blue robes, and more than 500 people in the standing-room-only audience, gathered in the Vacaville Cultural Center’s courtyard for cake, conversation, congratulations and still more memento photos.
Graduate Tyler Grinston, standing in the VPAT lobby and holding two celebratory metallic balloons, flashed a megawatt smile as relatives circled around to shake his hand or hug him.
“I’m happy,” he said, adding that he plans to study at Solano Community College and hopes to become a police officer. “I feel good.”