Schools

Central Bucks Graduates Ready to Make Their Marks

Friday was graduation day for the Central Bucks School District.

They streamed in, family and friends of the graduates, clutching bouquets of flowers in one hand and cameras or phones in the other.

At CB East, they filed into rows of white folding chairs in the sunny field in front of the school, laughing and chatting and brandishing umbrellas to keep off the sun.

At CB West, they filled the metal bleachers at War Memorial Field, overlooking the field where so many football teams had tasted victory over the years.

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And when the band began to play, the crowd quieted, for this was why they had come.

Friday was graduation day for the Central Bucks School District. In a series of three ceremonies - at CB East, CB West and CB South - the graduates of the third largest school district in the state heard wise advice as they received their diplomas.

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That piece of paper represents more than academic achievement, said CB East principal Abram Lucabaugh. It is "a passport to a world of unlimited opportunities," he told his graduating seniors, the boys garbed in blue and the girls in white.

Though the vast majority of Central Bucks graduates will continue on to college, even simply graduating from high school gives them an education too many  teens around the world still find out of reach, said Hannah Powell.

"You can read," Powell told her fellow graduates at CB East. "And on a day when we have so many accomplishments to celebrate that can seem like a small one. But consider for a moment that today you have completed a level of education that almost 20 percent of teenagers worldwide, that's 1.4 billion kids, won't even get a chance at."

At CB West, Margaret "Maggie" Brennan told her fellow graduating seniors that great things are expected of them.

"We are already on the path to shaping, influencing and improving the world around us," said Brennan, a National Merit Scholar who will attend American University in the fall. "The last hurdle is to realize how capable we really are."

Kelly Schmidt used the examples of prizefighter Muhammad Ali, mountain climber Edmund Hilary and Jonas Salk, who discovered the polio vaccine, to demonstrate that things once believed impossible became possible when a visionary dared to try.

As he and his fellow CB West graduates go off into the world to make their own marks, he urged them not to overlook the small kindnesses. Mountain climbers and scientists aren't the only ones who change the world, he said; nurses, teachers and engineers also change the world.

"It is the lives we touch that will make this world a better place," Schmidt said.

 

CB East By the Numbers:

Number of graduates: 517

GPA of 3.7 or higher: 171

Attending a 2-year or 4-year college or university: 482

Entering the work force: 12 

Entering the military: 7

Valedictorian: Kara Shen

Salutatorian: Stina Stannik

 

CB West By the Numbers:

Number of graduates: 460

National Merit Scholars: 20

Attending a 2-year or 4-year college or university: 419

Entering the military: 5

Valedictorian: Schichao Wang

Salutatorian: Mitchell Butler

 

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