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Puente, Pacific View grads continue tradition
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Photos by Eric Parsons / Star staff Puente High School graduates Daisy Calixto and Ana Gomez, right, embrace after receiving their diplomas at Thursday's commencement ceremony in Oxnard.
Fast facts
Schools: Pacific View High School; Puente High School.
School district: Oxnard Union High.
Spring enrollment: 93 at Pacific View; 55 at Puente.
Graduating class: Six at Pacific View; 36 at Puente.
Pacific View's most improved senior: Alfredo Aldaco.
Puente's top scholar: Maricruz Reyes.
Principal: Daisy Tatum.
Past year's highlights: This is Puente's largest graduating class.
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More from GraduationsAndrew Cintron handed a rose to his mom and stepfather for sticking by him when he got expelled.
Blanca Gomez chose her husband and 2-month-old son, Eddie, as the recipients of her flowers. "They mean everything to me," she said.
The presentation of two roses to loved ones is a tradition for each graduate at the commencement of Oxnard's Pacific View High School, a continuation school, and Puente High School, a campus for teen mothers.
It was a teary-eyed affair Thursday as the joint group of 42 graduates took their roses and filtered through an audience of 300 inside the Oxnard Performing Arts Center to reward their faithful.
After the graduates returned to their seats and tissues were shared, parents, friends and families cheered, hollered and drummed their seats as the students in royal blue robes marched across the stage to receive diplomas.
Daisy Tatum, principal of both schools, said that in addition to passing classes and planning their lives after high school, her graduates had to overcome things like poor grades or no grades, drug addiction, social problems and truancy.
"Your lives are before you," she said in her address, which she read in English and Spanish. "Your past is behind you."
The continuation school and teen program offered a second chance for many students.
Alfredo Aldaco was expelled in December from Hueneme High School for a drug violation. He could have quit school and maybe gotten a minimum-wage job. Instead, he enrolled at Pacific View, where he got serious about classwork and turned things around. He was chosen as the school's most improved senior.
He has a looming court date, but he plans to study business, earn an associate's degree at Oxnard College and then possibly attend a university.
"I didn't see myself making it to this point a couple years ago," he said.
Cintron also got expelled for a drug violation from Pacifica High School this spring. It was a tough blow, he said, because he was a C student on pace to graduate.
He said his mother, Veronica, and stepfather, Bobby Molina, supported him through the transition to Pacific View, which is why he chose them for his roses. He now has visions of being a teacher.
"I really wanted to graduate," he said. "I'm the first in my family."
Maria Diaz said her daughter, Irma Manriquez, was determined to graduate in four years, even though she essentially lost an entire school year while she was pregnant with her two little boys. Manriquez took extra classes at Oxnard College to make up the missed credits. She now is considering going to law school someday.
"She has been so dedicated," Diaz said of her daughter, who with her husband is expecting a third child. "I'm so proud of her."
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