VIDEO: Summit Atlas Class of 2026 graduation ceremony celebrates ‘perseverance’
(WSB video)
Hundreds of family members, friends, and educators gathered last night at Highline Performing Arts Center in Burien to cheer for West Seattle’s first high-school graduates of the year, the 55 graduating seniors of the Summit Atlas Class of 2026. We recorded the ceremony in three parts:
First, dean of culture and instruction Stephanie Day addressed the class, observing that graduation is “a celebration of perseverance. You kept showing up.” She was followed by learning specialist Jen Foster, who read Alberto Rios‘s poem “A House Called Tomorrow,” urging the grads to “make us proud, make yourselves proud. Two of them then spoke, Jacob Airhiavbere and Lilyana Ramirez (her observation: “We’re stepping into a future where nothing is guaranteed”). Following them was a feature unique to this school’s ceremony – the grads’ mentors taking the podium to say something about each and every student they mentored. Our first video segment includes Spanish teacher Jose Perez‘s tributes. He noted that his group (or “pod”) was defined by “growth, authenticity, and resiliency.” The next video segment begins with educator Kristen Smith talking about her “mentees”:
In that clip, she was followed by the third and final mentor to talk about her mentees, educator Jess Barco. Two of the three mentors mentioned the colleges/universities the students are off to, and it was a wide-ranging list – South Seattle College (WSB sponsor) was mentioned most frequently, with some going to its sibling school Seattle Central, others to UW, some to Western Washington University, and others heading far from home to schools including the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and Carnegie Mellon.
Our third clip includes the presentation of diplomas, with closing remarks by Summit Atlas’s first-year executive director/principal, Ebony Harvey:
The grads turned their tassels before leaving the stage, but were told the venue didn’t allow cap-tossing indoors, so they had to go outside for that. Summit Atlas is a charter middle/high school that opened nine years ago on the southwest corner of 35th/Roxbury; this is the school’s sixth graduating class – the first one, in 2021, numbered 33.
OTHER HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATIONS: Our area’s two biggest high schools, Chief Sealth International HS and West Seattle HS, both have graduation ceremonies on Wednesday, June 17, at McCaw Hall (hosting graduations while Memorial Stadium is being rebuilt) – CSIHS at 5 pm, WSHS at 8 pm.
