Struggles and triumph: Nearly 300 graduate from Capital High School
Student — who lost mother to cancer, saw splintering of family and is raising two children — is among 293 graduates
Guadalupe Avalos almost didn’t make it to graduation day at Capital High School. The 18-year-old lost her mom to cancer two years ago. Her dad and the rest of the family fragmented shortly afterward and moved away. To add to her challenges, her father disapproved of Avalos giving birth to two children.
God, she said, kept her going. So did her two children, Javier, 3, and Mia, who turns 1 Friday.
“I wanted to quit several times,” Avalos said, crying, as she stood in line in the school gym waiting for the class procession onto the athletic field for the graduation ceremony Thursday morning. “But I thought about my kids. What future could I give my kids if I didn’t finish? I want to be a role model for them.”
Avalos was one of 293 seniors to receive diplomas. Her story of struggle spoke to the challenges many of the students have faced or will face, as Principal Channell Wilson-Segura told the class in her commencement address. She said poverty, a constant companion of many students at the school, bears some weight in whether a person can succeed or fail. Some 70 percent of students in Santa Fe Public Schools are considered impoverished based on federal guidelines for the free- and reduced-lunch program.
In some cases, it wasn’t poverty that presented a challenge to getting a diploma, but bad choices.
Senior Priscilla Vega was another one who almost did not make it to the finish line. A top student in her junior year, she started skipping school this year. She said she made a lot of decisions that pushed her away from her family and into bad company.
She didn’t want to talk about her missteps, which she initially blamed on God.
“I thought he was really unfair
to me,” Vega said. “He was actually taking my barriers away, but I thought he was punishing me.” Graduation day, she said, “means happiness. I’m blessed. I did it.”
For many in the graduation class, the next step is college. Many plan to attend New Mexico colleges. Vega, for example, will attend New Mexico State University in Las Cruces to study early childhood education. Avalos is going to Santa Fe Community College
to earn a degree to work as a certified nursing assistant.
But Steven Perez wants to go farther than that. He is joining the Navy to become a nuclear engineer on what he calls “the big rigs.” His uncle served in the Navy, and his father was in the Army. “Everybody in my family did it, so I’m gonna do it too,” he said. He plans to put in 20 years and retire with full benefits before he is
40 years old.
For Luis Cisneros, graduation day held mixed emotions because he was placed last in the line of nearly 300 students, even though his last name starts with a C. That happened, he said, because he failed to make it to the dress rehearsal the day before.
At first, the change in line placement made him sad. But then, as the procession began heading out of the gym and onto the field, he had a second thought.
“Actually, this is great that I’m the last person,” he said. “It could be like the finish of a big show.”
The commencement ceremony, which lasted about two hours, included an address by the school’s Teacher of the Year, Eric Brayden, who likened the students’ achievement to the 1977 Voyager space exploration mission. He said the graduates will feel like they are on top of the world for a while but need to brace for “the inevitable return to the bottom” before cycling back up in the universes that they create for themselves.