Hoboken High School and Demarest Alternative High School will graduate 140 seniors in a joint ceremony on Monday June 21, 6 p.m., at JFK Stadium Veterans Field at 10th and Jefferson streets. In case of inclement weather, the ceremony will move to the high school auditorium, 800 Clinton St.
Demarest Alternative is a high school for students who need more individualized education than does Hoboken High School. It’s headquartered in the building at Fourth and Garden streets, which decades ago was Hoboken’s original high school.
Senior Ashley Barron, who will attend Penn State in the fall, will deliver the salutatorian address.
Mayor Dawn Zimmer will read a proclamation concerning this year’s valedictorians and salutatorians.
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Charter school
The Hoboken Charter High School has scheduled its graduation ceremony for 16 seniors on Tuesday, June 29 at 6 p.m. at Our Lady of Grace School Hall, 422 Willow Ave. The valedictorian is Keyyanna Moyd, and the salutatorian is Amelie Marrache.
Hoboken contains two charter schools – Hoboken charter and Elysian Charter – which were founded in the mid-1990s. Elysian stops at eighth grade, while Hoboken Charter has its own high school.
A charter school is a public school that is usually founded by educators and parents who apply to the state for a charter. While it operates largely independently of a local school district’s Board of Education and can avoid dealing with teachers’ unions, it receives most of its funding through the local board and must conform to certain education guidelines. It is considered a public school and is thus open to all students on a space-available basis. It is managed by a board of trustees.
The scholarships to be awarded to Hoboken Charter students include: the Hoboken Rotary Foundation Scholarship, the Academic Achievement Cornerstone, the Civic Achievement Cornerstone, the Arts Achievement Cornerstone, the Personal Achievement Cornerstone, and the Hoboken Charter School Character and Spirit Award.
The scheduled keynote speaker for the event is writer Sofia Quintero. Part of the burgeoning and successful genre of “chica lit,” Quintero is an author, activist, and businesswoman who has transformed her passion for social change into her fiction, most recently with a novel entitled “Divas Don’t Yield.”
Hoboken charter’s graduates will be starting classes in the fall at these New Jersey schools: Iona College and Utica College of New York, the University of Hartford in Connecticut, College of St. Elizabeth, St. Peters College, New Jersey City University, Union County College, Felician College, County College of Morris, William Paterson University, Hudson County Community College, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Seton Hall University, Montclair State College, Caldwell College, Bloomfield College, and Bergen Community College.