June 14, 2004

Preuss School At UCSD To Hold Commencement Rites June 30

By Pat JaCoby

Greetings in the 11 native languages of their families will be given by 11 graduating students to open commencement ceremonies at 4 p.m. June 30 for the 55 members of the Preuss School’s first graduating class at the University of California, San Diego.

Keynote speaker at the graduation, to be held on Manchester Field at the school, will be Robert C. Dynes, president of the University of California. Doris Alvarez, Preuss School principal, will give the official welcome, and brief remarks will be made by Peter Preuss, University of California Regent; Dave Miller, acting UCSD senior vice chancellor; Cecil Lytle, chair of the Preuss School Board of Directors, and Alan Bersin, superintendent, San Diego Unified School District.

Gloria Hoang, who will attend Stanford University in the fall, will represent the graduating class as valedictorian. Jesse Lopez, who has enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall, will serve as salutatorian.

Joining President Dynes in the presentation of graduation diplomas will be Fran Zimmerman, representing the San Diego Unified School Board of Trustees. Marco Murillo, senior class president and fall enrollee at UCSD, will lead the traditional turning of the tassel ceremony.

Languages represented in the student greeting include Spanish, Chinese, Tigrina, Amharic, Cambodian, Korean, Indian, Tagalog, German, Vietnamese and English.

The Class of 2004 has the distinction of being Preuss School’s charter eighth grade class as well as its first graduation class. All 55 members have been accepted to college and will continue their education at either four-year universities or junior colleges. Of these, 10 Preuss students will attend private schools this fall and 23 will attend a UC campus. Nineteen of these 23 will study at UCSD. In addition to Stanford and MIT, other private schools accepting Preuss School students included Dartmouth, the University of San Diego, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd and Carnegie Mellon.

The Preuss School was established in 1998 as a public charter school by the University of California, San Diego and chartered under the San Diego Unified School District as a public school that provides a tuition-free, college-prep education to low-income sixth to 12th grade students whose parents are not college graduates. Students are admitted by an application process and lottery, and participate in a longer school day and year than in other District schools. The goal for the 763 Preuss School students is to prepare them to be competitively eligible for admission to UC-caliber universities.

Now just five years since the first Preuss students enrolled, the school ranked as a top performer on the California Department of Education’s most recent Academic Performance Index (API). In fact, Preuss ranked second highest among San Diego County high schools, and also is rated as one of the region’s high achieving middle schools.

Other graduation activities include “Grad Night” at Disneyland June 17; a junior-senior prom sponsored by the new Estancia La Jolla hotel June 19, senior awards night June 21, senior dinner June 28 and senior breakfast June 29.

Media Contact: Pat JaCoby, 858 534-7404