CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Proud parents and families watched thousands of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students graduate Saturday.
The students receiving their diplomas had a rough couple of years: dealing with increased violence in schools, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a rise in mental health concerns for youth.
Proudly dressed in white, hundreds of graduates from Butler High School received their high school diplomas at Bojangles Coliseum.
They said it was not without hardship.
"Since that first day of school in 2018, we've all endured tragedies, not only in our personal lives but as a community and as a class," said Sophia Goetz, the 2022 Student Government Association President, "including the unspeakable tragedy freshman year that made us cover for safety from the hallways."
In 2018 a 16-year-old student, Bobby McKeithen, died after a shooting at Butler High. Authorities said the deadly shooting was a bullying incident gone "out of control". The suspect, also a then 16-year-old Butler student was charged with first-degree murder.
“A tornado sophomore year that pushed us into those vary same halls to seek safety, to COVID-19 that took us completely out of the halls for a year and a half,” Goetz's speech continued.
In early 2020. a confirmed EF-1 tornado damaged parts of Charlotte, not long after COVID-19 shut down in-person schooling for more than a year.
The pandemic also impacted graduation rates at CMS during this time. From the 2019-2020 school year to now graduation rates fell by 1.4%. That represents hundreds of students. CMS has seen falling graduation rates for more than four years now.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the national graduation rate in 2021 is 86%. North Carolina sits right above this at 87%, and South Carolina is at 81%.
According to CMS, its 2021-2022 four-year graduation rate is 83.6%. In 2015, the graduation rate was 88%.
“You deserve to be congratulated," said Vincent Golden, Butler High School's principal, "as you have endured and drive to reach this great goal.”
Despite the pandemic, historically more people are graduating and fewer people are dropping out of school.
In 2019, there were 2 million status dropouts between the ages of 16 and 24, and the overall status dropout rate was 5.1%. The overall status dropout rate decreased from 8.3% in 2010, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Madison Graves-Murray, a Butler graduate, said it took a lot for her and her peers to get to this moment.
“I felt like my junior and sophomore year, I felt like I couldn't do it," she said.
Now, she’s going to the prestigious HBCU Hampton University in Virginia.
"It's okay not to have everything figured out, you know, but you know, still have like a Plan A and Plan B possibly a Plan C," Graves-Murray said as advice to her peers. "Don't just go with it headfirst you know, always have something planned out.”
High school is now in the past for the CMS class of 2022, as the new graduates turned their tassels from the left to right.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.