Lakewood High School Graduation 2015

congratulations [Music] many many years ago and I'm a little bit Rusty so I did a math on my calculator and that's 88% and I'll tell you why it's very significant to me because as I travel although I have very little interaction with the Board of Ed or with the administration of the of the district but it affects me what goes on here because when I travel and and the newspapers write about a low graduation rate then when I go to functions and events people harass me about my town and I always tell them that my town is a very tough town and and they're working very hard and getting those graduation numbers up I wanted the newspapers to report that a class that was faced with so many challenges whether was changes in staff changes in administration changes in your board of ed internal issues that I don't want to even talk about yet so many people 88% of you are graduating that's something to be very proud of I hope there are members of the press here and I hope they're taking notes and I hope they write this because I want to walk around now and say yeah I'm the mayor of L New Jersey we graduate we sure do and for you it means so much the fact that you went through all these challenges and you stood there and looked adversity in the face and he said yes I can do it and I look at all your support gr I see everybody screaming I love you this I love you that people highing high fiving each other whether it's friends or family or or or siblings I don't know who it is but your support groups you have to thank them because from this day forward you can look back and you can say that you're a winner and when you're faced with a challenge like life is full of choices and we're always responsible for the actions we take and the decisions we make and you can always look back and say when I was in high school I had a very hard time but I did it and I hope your entire life is a is a reflection of your four years in high school thank you so much for having me