Aliyya Swaby Photo
Graduates dance their way to Carolina.
Hillhouse High School seniors leapt from their chairs and started to dance when former Principal Kermit Carolina took the podium at their graduation Thursday evening.
It’s been a long four years. But they see better days ahead — for themselves and their school.
The seniors had seen three separate principals and continued in-house controversy since Carolina ran Hillhouse, with a fourth principal on the way.
Carolina: You fought the good fight.
“I’m baaack!” Carolina called out amid raucous applause.
The former principal of the school, Carolina was summoned back as Hillhouse graduation speaker just three days after Glen Worthy was announced as the new principal in an overhaul of a top-heavy leadership structure following a painful citywide debate over how to fix problems at the school.
Almost 300 seniors formed long lines along the side of the Floyd Little Field House and across the stage to grab diplomas and shake hands — at the end of a school year that united them in conflict and protest.
On stage Thursday, Carolina said he was “proud” of seniors because they “endured tough times. When things were getting tough at Hillhouse, I watched you fight.”
With two of the three principals this year sitting on stage behind him, he led the crowd in a chant: “One principal, one school! One principal, one school!”
“I was extra proud of you for pushing that,” he said.
Carolina was the sole principal of Hillhouse for three years, before district leaders divided the school into separate mini-academies and put a separate principal in charge of each one.
The students who graduated Thursday night were the most vocal opponents of the change, arguing the academy system left them without adequate resources or support as their College and Career Readiness Academy was being phased out for the next year.
They were “forced together,” said English teacher and senior class adviser Rhonda Yeager. The conflict “created an atmosphere where they helped each other, stuck up for each other. They’re closer than they would be.”
Algarin.
They banded together to stop by Principal Zakiyyah Baker’s office and ask for Carolina as the graduation speaker. It wasn’t an organized effort, said senior Orlando Algarin, but the consensus spread throughout the class.
“I started with him since freshman year,” Algarin said. The switch to a three-principal structure was “hectic.” This past year, most of his teachers didn’t know how to use any of the college navigation programs required to fill out his application. Instead, he went to every teacher and cobbled together “bits and pieces” of knowledge from each — ultimately leading him to enlist in the National Guard.
School board member Alicia Caraballo and Baker.
Following the form of a typical graduation speech, Carolina left the seniors with four concrete pieces of advice: Have a vision for who you want to be in the world, find a circle of people moving in the same direction, set goals for yourself and create a cabinet of advisers you trust.
Student speakers, too, vaguely referred to the challenges that plagued their senior year, which included a lack of support applying to colleges, broken and unavailable technology and isolation from the rest of the student body.
Senior class President Isheeka Bruce rallied students to move past the “rumors” and negative reputation of Hillhouse, which are “not true. It was a great school to me. You shape your high school experience, not the school.”
And Principal Baker, designated the coordinating principal earlier this school year, contrasted the graduates’ heady optimism with their darker feelings almost a year ago.
“In August, many of you were upset with the world … You felt cheated,” she said. “You were not happy campers on that third floor.”
Family members snap photos of their graduates.
Some students in the audience shook their heads, in agreement with that characterization.
Baker went on to congratulate them for moving past those problems, for the fact that about 85 percent were accepted to at least one two- or four-year college. They started and ended “at the top,” she said.
Baker will no longer be principal of Hillhouse. She isn’t sure where she’s going to be in the fall. “Wherever I go, the kids will be there,” she said.
She’s happy to see that Worthy, the new principal, is from New Haven, like she is. “We were worried about someone coming in who doesn’t have a vision for our goals,” she said.
Like Carolina, Worthy attended Wilbur Cross High School. He was principal of Hill Central School before being hired to head adult education in 2014.
Veteran teacher Jack Paulishen expressed optimism about the future of the school with Worthy.
“We’re going to make it work. I’m happy with the choice,” he said. “Even though he went to Wilbur Cross. We’ll forgive him,” he joked.