San Gorgonio High School (San G) valedictorian Silvana Vazquez celebrated her final day as a high school student along with 346 other graduates during the school’s May 30 commencement ceremony. Come fall, Vazquez will have left the San Bernardino City Unified School District (SBCUSD) behind to walk the campus of Harvard University.
Born and raised in San Bernardino, Vazquez will head to the East Coast in a few months, where she will study government and pre-law, with the goal of becoming an immigration lawyer. At San G, Vazquez took advantage of honors and Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which gave her an edge. She credits SBCUSD and its teachers with helping her uncover her brilliance.
“As a student who strives for perfection, hard work and discipline, SBCUSD has provided various resources that helped me go above and beyond in my academics and college preparedness,” said Vazquez, who spent her senior year serving as a student member of the Board of Education. “SBCUSD offers various programs such as dual enrollment to help me get ahead on college credit, but also focus on my high school education. Thanks to SBCUSD, I have had the incredible honor to get accepted into rigorous colleges that I would not have been accepted into if it weren’t for the programs offered by SBCUSD.”
The Dual Enrollment Program is offered at several SBCUSD high schools, providing students with the opportunity to take some college courses that also meet their high school graduation requirements. The District’s Middle College High School (MCHS) is dedicated to dual enrollment, providing qualifying SBCUSD students with an opportunity to meet half or more of their high school graduation requirements through courses at San Bernardino Valley College (SBVC). MCHS students have the opportunity to graduate with an associate’s degree and Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) certification at the same time as a high school diploma. IGETC is a set of California community college courses students complete to satisfy most University of California (UC) or California State University (CSU) freshman- and sophomore-level general education requirements.