The Academic Choice (AC) Graduation was held in the Berkeley High School Community Theater on Tuesday, May 27, 2025 at 6 p.m. Joseph Smith, the AC teacher lead and an AC history teacher, emceed the graduation.
Matthew Carton, an AC English teacher, gave opening remarks about the beginning of AC as a small school. “On behalf of those students, parents, teachers of 20 years ago, I want to thank you for making their vision come true, because you have the ability to do what we wanted in the first place — to have a choice, to have the best education you possibly could, and for the next 20 years, may what you’ve done be a beacon for our students who will be coming,” Carton said.
Next, BHS senior Manny Lane-Scott took the stage delivering his graduation speech. “We grew. Not in the dramatic, inspirational-movie way. In the real way. Quietly, in moments when no one was clapping. When we failed at something. When we showed up late but still stayed. When we had every reason to give up but didn’t. That’s the growth that matters: the kind that doesn’t get posted, the kind that sticks,” Lane-Scott said.
AC teachers Noah Pollak and Kate Rosen continued the ceremony by reading the graduates’ names while Smith and Carton awarded them AC graduation stoles.
As an interlude between reciting the graduates’ names, BHS senior Addison Davis, who played Orpheus in BHS’ Spring 2025 “Hadestown” performances, performed “Epic III,” a song from “Hadestown.”
Finally, Isabel Eknoian, a BHS senior in AC and Vice Principal of AC Keldon Clegg gave the final words.
Eknoian said, “We’re all made up of energy from all that has come before us, shaped by the people, emotions and experiences of our past, from leadership experiences to athletic achievements to shaping the culture of Berkeley High (School) as a whole, we have left our mark, and that impact will continue as we move on to the next stage of our lives.”