Norwood News

Bronx School of Law and Finance – John F. Kennedy Campus

The audience choked up as Jourdain Deyanirse, the salutatorian at the Bronx School of Law and Finance, began speaking directly to her mother, first in English and then in Spanish, at the small school’s third-ever graduation ceremony on Thursday, June 25 at Teacher’s College in Manhattan.

“I want to extend a special thank you to my mom for giving up her dreams for mine,” Jourdain said. “Thank you for your help, support, guidance, and hard work. Now because of you, and I, I will finally be attending my dream college at New York University!”

One of the announcers, Matt Neville, recovered with a joke directed toward a random student in the audience.

“I saw a tear come out of his eye and it got all the way down here,” he said, motioning to his chin, “before it got scared and ran back up.”

Laughter rang out across the auditorium, and the excitement returned to those who were graduating.

Neville, who headed the Latin program at the school, said that as a professor, his experience at the Bronx school rivaled every other he had known. “It doesn’t even compare, it’s amazing, you can see the family atmosphere, it’s so small,” he said.

“It’s been a lot of rough times but a lot of good times,” said one graduated student, Mian Colon, who now plans to study studio engineering in Brooklyn. “I feel like I have a really good family here.”

Even though the classrooms will still average around 30 students per classroom, Neville said what makes a difference at Bronx Law and Finance, which is one of several small schools on the John F. Kennedy High School campus, is that advisory teams made up of teachers and counselors are there for groups of students.

“So even if there’s no one else for them [at home or otherwise], there’s someone right in the school that really cares for them,” Neville said. “In the advisory setting we’re able to give them life skills that you can’t give in the classroom.”

Coming from Florida, Carmen Adames, the mother of valedictorian Stephanie Camillo, said she was surprised to see this kind of personalized attention in a New York school.

“I didn’t think I was going to find it here, but I did,” she said. “It was very much catered to meet the needs of the student no matter how they got there. They did it.”

District 11 Councilman Oliver Koppell was also in attendance, and said he was pleased to see how the school had progressed since he had helped in providing funds to build a mock-courtroom in one of the school’s classrooms.

“We in the City Council in the city of New York try to make educational success the password or the byword for every student, and I think some of the conversions of the large schools into the small schools have been a great success,” Koppel said, referring to the 1985 New York Board of Education’s New Visions Initiative to break up larger failing schools into smaller schools similar to trade schools.

“I’m so pleased you’re pursuing a career in law and finance,” said Koppell, a lawyer by trade. “We desperately need better people in finance. Look what the people in finance have done over the last few months down on Wall Street.”

Times are truly changing, Koppell said, and perhaps some of the things we conceive today as barriers will no longer be for our younger generations. He gave the current example of race and how minorities such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, President, Barack Obama and  Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor have risen to the top of the United States’ political system.  He also noted that both Powell and Sotomayor were born and raised in the Bronx-area.
“Your future is limited only by your own aspirations and your own commitment, and by the work you can achieve and what you want to achieve,” he said. “[Graduation] It’s an achievement but not an end — it is truly a commencement.”    —Ashley Villarreal

Discovery High School –
Walton High School Campus
Amongst tears, cheers and laughter, Discovery High School’s class of 2009 bid their final farewell to their high school teachers, friends and principal in an exciting and energetic graduation ceremony at Fordham University’s Keating Hall.

The class of 2009 is Discovery High School’s third graduating class since it opened six years ago as a small school on the Walton High School campus in Kingsbridge Heights.

Discovery Principal Rolando Rivera’s graduating class has broken all State Regents Exam requirement and achievement records for the school. Out of the 60 graduates, 43 are above the minimal Regents requirements and 21 achieved advanced Regents honors. Last year only one student from the graduating class got advanced Regents recognition.

Rivera attributed the school’s success to its instructional program and the close and supportive relationship between faculty and students including himself who personally tutors students. Rivera said. “If you really focus on kids, believe in them and set clear and high expectations, they will rise to the occasion.”

At the ceremony, faculty and students thanked each other, sharing tears and emotional stories.

Both Karolyn Guzman and Bruni Moraza, the co-salutatorians, as well as the valedictorian Stephanie Fernandez received laptops to help them in college. Rivera said the vast majority of the graduating class is going to college while a few have enrolled in the military.
—Idalmi Acosta