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Schools

Mountain View Alternative High School Graduates 84 Students

Principal applauds graduates for "grit" and determination

More than 500 family members and friends on Friday attended the graduation ceremonies for 84 students from , one of the county’s two high schools which offer students a different path to a diploma.

Held at in Vienna to accommodate the large crowd, it was a typical graduation ceremony in many ways, with lots of happy students and beaming family members, proud of their graduates.

It was different also in the thorny paths many of the students had to take to getting their degrees, said Principal Dave Jagels, a former assistant principal at . Many had to overcome difficulties at home, homelessness, ostracism at non-alternative schools or life circumstances which interrupted their schooling, like a pregnancy. Indeed there were plenty of newborns and toddlers in the audience on Friday.

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“The students here have grit,” Jagels said during the ceremony. “I look out at the audience and I see students who have overcome obstacles that others would have found overwhelming.”

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The school, located in Centreville just behind a shopping center, is small—it averages about 300 students a year. That gives the staff a chance to teach in smaller classrooms and give students more one-on-one attention, Jagels said.

Noah Poulson, of Herndon, attended classes at the school for a year and said he appreciated the one-on-one attention. He plans on attending Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) to become an auto mechanic.

“That really helped,” he said. “They said Mountain View was easier than other high schools, but it was the one-on-one with the teachers that really helped me.”

Gerrod Scott, of Herndon, said he enjoyed his two years at the school. He wants to take business or hotel management classes at NOVA.

“We got through the classes a lot quicker,” than the academic coursework at Herndon High School, Scott said. “Looking back on it, maybe I should have come here from the very start.”

Hassan Chaudhry, of Reston, who won an academic achievement medal, said it was the teachers and counselors at the school that made it work for him. He plans to take pre-med courses in college.

“It was a good time and the teachers, they were the best,” Chaudhry said.

The dedication by the staff is evident to members of the community. Christy Burnside, a volunteer at the ceremonies from in Manassas, said the church has been helping with pregnancy and parenting programs at the school for the past 11 years. She says that the teachers have a real rapport with the students.

“We come here to do the reception because it gives the teachers a chance to be in there with their students where they belong,” Burnside said.

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