5 SLO County high schools celebrate their 2022 graduates: ‘I’m just amazed’
Several north San Luis Obispo County high schools celebrated their 2022 classes this week — kicking off a busy graduation season for the county.
Five schools, Atascadero High School, Coast Union High School, Paloma Creek High School, A.C.E. Academy High School and Leffingwell High School, commemorated their grads through various ceremonies on Wednesday and Thursday.
Atascadero High School graduated 332 students at its commencement on Thursday evening at the school’s stadium.
The school gave a special salute to valedictorian Kylie Sims — who earned a 4.59 grade-point average — and salutatorian Alexander DeFraga — who finished with a 4.53 grade-point average, according to principal Dan Andrus.
Atascadero High School commencement speaker Kianna Lambert gave tribute to her time in the school’s band for helping her through her educational journey.
“Watching from my perspective you would see a very shy band kid who lacked confidence but who eventually grew and became the leader of the band,” she said. “From my point of view ... you would see the band so full of love and joy and people so true to themselves, giving me support and courage. They’re my family and because of them I had character development and became the person who I am today.”
In total, students at Atascadero High School earned $192,000 in local scholarships, Andrus said.
Another 36 students graduated from the Atascadero alternative education high schools in a ceremony on Thursday, according to Principal Libby Madding.
“It was beautiful!” she exclaimed.
Coast Union celebrates 46 new grads
In Cambria, the swirling sea of red and gold at Coast Union High School’s gymnasium ceremony Thursday afternoon included 46 newly minted grads, according to a list provided by Samantha Brossette, school counselor for the Coast Unified School District.
“I’m just amazed at all the accomplishments these kids have … these are very high-performing, great students,” Edward Arrigoni, principal of Coast Union and Leffingwell high schools, said. “They’re involved in extra curricular activities and the vast majority are great students while most also are holding down full-time jobs. They certainly earned a lot of scholarships, too, about $132,000 worth.”
Despite that total, reportedly the highest Coast graduation scholarship haul in history, during the ceremony, UC Davis-bound grad Shaidy Plascencia joked to laughter when she advised her fellow grads, “Now would be a good time to ask for money.”
There were 12 graduates at Leffingwell High School on Wednesday. The school began the year with a total of 21, but some of those graduated in January, according to Arrigoni.
Eight Coast grads will go on to Cal Poly, three to UC Davis, and one each to UC Berkeley (valedictorian Elise Happel) and UC Santa Cruz (salutatorian Isabella Weaver), along with several Cal State universities and other four-year colleges. Another 23 graduates plan to attend Cuesta College, and the rest intend to enroll in other colleges or educational programs.
Happel said that “this day is the light at the end of the tunnel” after a four-year high school experience that included pandemic shutdowns of the campus, when students had to learn quickly how to study online.
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 10:25 AM.
