Christopher Peak Photo
Creed students toss their caps in the air, after officially finishing high school.
After two decades, one last class of seniors from Cortlandt V.R. Creed Health & Sports Science High School received diplomas to call the now-shuttered school their alma mater.
Forty-five Creed students graduated at a half-hour ceremony Monday evening, before a packed house of tearful parents in Hill Regional Career High School’s auditorium.
The commencement ceremony will be the last for Creed, formerly known as Hyde Leadership School. After being moved around from one dilapidated building to another, Creed was finally closed by the Board of Education, as the district tried to close a massive budget deficit and the school faced penalties for its lack of racial diversity.
Laura Roblee.
“You continue to amaze me at how mature you are and the sense of family you have shown, especially with all that we’ve been through this school year. You stand up for what you believe in, even if the outcome did not directly affect you. You saw the bigger picture and spoke out for your Creed family,” said Laura Roblee, the school’s principal for the last two years. “I’m so very proud of your fighting spirit and your ability to care for the classes that will come after you.”
High school graduations are already bittersweet; Creed’s was even more so. Students are eager to push on to the next stage of their lives. They’re also sad to leave behind the friends from the four years in which they started to find themselves.
On Monday, that feeling was heightened knowing the site of their adolescent memories wouldn’t be around next year. No one would receive the same awards; no one would ever see the same faces on the stage; no one would celebrate students just like them again.
Even the faculty felt it. Steve DeCrosta, an athletic coach that the students picked to be commencement speaker, said it felt like the teachers were graduating too, as they moved on to other schools or even careers.
Jacob Spell.
Faced with that loss, speakers said the graduates needed to work that much harder to preserve Creed’s legacy, particularly the bonds that made the small school so special.
Jacob Spell, the class’s valedictorian and the district’s student representative on the Board of Education, told students to remember what it felt like to fight for Creed when they confronted injustices later on.
“When society tells us that hate and division are the answer, we can use our time at Creed as a reference for how the world should be,” said Spell. “We are the future. So if we are not satisfied with the changes taking place around you, know that you have the power and the voice to do something about it.”
Spell, who’s headed to Yale next year, added that it’s “alluring” to be the underdog who comes from nothing and makes it out to a bigger city, but he urged his classmates to stay and fix the problems they find within New Haven.
Creed students line up to receive their diplomas.
After students accepted their diplomas on stage and tossed their tassled caps into the air, Roblee reminded them that they’d always have another a Creed family, even if it was now scattered throughout the district.
“You watched the very place that you called home change its name and become no more,” she said. “Class of 2018, remember that your Creed family will always be with you. We may be in different buildings next year, but we are always a family. Wherever we are, that is where you can call home. So Class of 2018, you just inherited about 44 new homes to go to.”