Students at Cesar E. Chavez Social Justice Humanitas Academy in the town of San Fernando have not had an easy high school experience. No sooner had they learned their way around the halls as freshman, than they were plunged into the uncertainty of the COVID-19 lockdown and the isolation of distance learning.
The next year and a half were a struggle for students, many of whom came from low-income Latino families in the San Fernando Valley and watched as their loved ones lost their jobs and lives due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, they persisted and with the help of their counselor, principal and teachers, they prospered.
On Wednesday night, May 31, the school’s 97 graduates proudly walked across the stage, collected their high school graduation diplomas, and stepped boldly into the future.
“I’m so very proud of these students,” said Raquel Veloz, a senior counselor at the school. “Getting to graduation was difficult because a lot of them got used to the online learning, several of them fell behind a lot, and towards the end of the semester we weren’t sure what was going to happen to some. But they all pulled through.”
The students walked out of the gymnasium dressed in robes and beautifully decorated caps bearing college logos, Mexican flags and messages of thanks to family members. The sights brought tears to the eyes of many parents.
This was certainly the case for Elizabeth Torres and Antonio Alvarez, who became overwhelmed with emotion in the moments before the ceremony. Their son Andy Alvarez had a tough middle school and high school experience, dealing with isolation and struggling to stay on top of his coursework.
“He had a rough time and we struggled, but we are here and we made it,” said Torres, who said she is very grateful to the school for giving her son an individualized education program to help him catch up, reaching out to him when he was absent and encouraging him to apply to college.
Her advice to other parents whose…
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