By Bill Zeeble, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-971708.mp3
Dallas, TX – It's graduation season. At one small Dallas high school, seniors weren't sure they would ever experience it. After all, graduation passed them by long ago. But KERA's Bill Zeeble reports on the inaugural graduating class of DISD's John Leslie Patton Academic Center, a school for older students.
To some, these students could be labeled losers.'
Students: I dropped out, I stopped going. I "NG'd" a lot, too. No grades.
I got pregnant, so I decided to just drop out.
I wound up going to jail. Aggravated robbery.
Tomorrow, things change.
Rehearsing for the big moment, these dropouts, single parents, and ex-cons - all in their 20s - will dress up for friends and family to accomplish what they've never done before: graduate high school. The small group of 28 makes up the first senior class of Dallas' Patton Academy, a high school for students officially for aged 17 to 21. Several though, are older. 20 year-old David Obregon - a Sunset High School dropout - embraced the opportunity.
David Obregon: You really do need that diploma. There's a lot of jobs that look for it. Especially, you know, 20 years old, no diploma, and right away people say you can't finish something. That's why I really wanted to come get it.
Students here say passing the GED - the high school equivalency test - is not the same.
Deidra Lawrence: I don't want no GED, I want a high school diploma. I think it's more, up there, I guess? High-end or something. That's why I wanted it. (Bill Zeeble: It makes a difference to you?). Lawrence: There's a difference between a GED and a high school diploma. I worked harder for this one.
22 year-old Deidra Lawrence was enrolled in Texas Can Academy, got pregnant and dropped out a few years ago.
Lawrence: I was looking at my kids, saying I don't want this for them. I wanted them to graduate. So I have to do the same, so they can follow in my footsteps. So here I am. My kids made me grow up. This is a part of growing up. I have to do what I got to do.
Every student here can tell a story about beating the odds. The DISD's Deardra Hayes-Whigam, Director of Alternative Education, says Patton was created to improve those odds.
Deardra Hayes-Whigam, Director of Alternative Education Learning Community: This gives students with different stories an opportunity to say hey I have a second chance to get a high school diploma and hopefully go on from there to college.
College is where many students say they're headed. Obregon is hoping to get into Chicago's Columbia College. 25-year-old Patton Class President Luz Palomino Hidalgo has college plans too. She never imagined this life when she got married.
Luz Palomino Hidalgo: My husband and I thought marriage is going to be forever. Unfortunately, seven years later, we're getting a divorce. And he kept going to school. But I put my life on stop. And I'm thinking, he's good, he has his, what's going to happen to me? I'm just a mom, I'm not going to just sit around while my girls look at me and say I can go back and do it.
Palomino Hidalgo graduates tomorrow, and starts classes at El Centro Community College on Monday. Betty Williams, Patton's Social Services Advisor, applauds every graduate.
Williams: There are a couple students who along the way during their academic year decided that they were going to drop out: "This is too much for me, it's too hard, I can't do it." We would just embrace them, talk to them, encourage them, counsel them, coach them, almost literally beg them to please see this through. And many of them did.
Williams, Patton teachers, and new students start all over again when the new year begins in August. Meanwhile, DISD is considering a middle school for older-aged students.