Sweetwater Union High School District’s Division of Adult Education held their graduation ceremony on May 31 for hundreds of graduates at Castle Park High School’s Swift Stadium.
The graduates came from Chula Vista, Montgomery, National City, and San Ysidro adult schools.
“The graduates that have made it through our program and into the world of high school graduates have overcome a wide variety of challenges and obstacles,” said principal of San Ysidro Adult School Wesley Braddock. “They have every skill and characteristic necessary to be an outstanding citizen in the South Bay and elsewhere.”
“It means everything to me,” said graduate Tahra Carranza, 41. “It’s something I never thought I would accomplish,” she said of graduating high school.
“This, Castle Park High School, was the school I was supposed to graduate from in 1996,” said Carranza. She planned on having a dinner celebration with her husband, Pedro, and son, Christian, at Black Angus Restaurant, where she worked for 15 years.
“I’m starting nursing school at Southwestern College and then plan on going to Grossmont College,” said Carranza. She plans on getting her master’s degree online.
“I asked for a tattoo,” Carranza said on what she wanted for a graduation gift.
Eventual graduates had a variety of obstacles they overcame.
“It means a lot to me; I thought this moment would never come. I had a terrible car accident ten years ago and was in a coma,” said graduate Zaira Simones, 28. She has already enrolled in Southwestern College.
“I want to be a social worker for handicapped people,” Simones said, who was born in Chula Vista but lives in San Ysidro.
Soon-to-be retired principal, Wesley Braddock, welcomed the graduates, staff, family and friends in attendance to the graduation ceremony as well as other duties like awarding of diplomas. The tassel ceremony and closing remarks were also implemented by Braddock’s last graduation after decades with district.
The graduates included those who had completed their United States citizenship coursework.
More than 500 graduated but not all walked in the ceremony.
