Toni Harper graduated May 27 from Denver Justice High School. She was salutatorian of her class of 12, and Post photographer John Leyba shot a great picture of her. She's wearing her cap and gown and is crying, one hand raised to her brow. Her principal, Gary Losh, stands at her side, comforting her.
Tears are expected at high school graduations. But the photo caption noted Denver Justice High is an alternative charter school serving "at-risk students." Toni, then, was a young woman who had come within a hair's-breadth of not graduating. But she did, and in that "but" resides a story.
I meet Toni and her mom on Monday morning at the high school, which is a former church that looks like a former insurance office off West Elk Place and Shoshone Street. Most of the students here could not find a fit in a traditional high school setting. Some cut a lot of class. Some got into trouble with the law. Most have six, seven, eight years worth of learning to catch up on.
Toni enrolled two years ago when the school, which started in Boulder, opened a sister campus here. Before that, she had been at George Washington High School, Contemporary Learning Academy, the PREP Center and Smiley Middle School. Toni, who was in a gifted program in elementary school, slid farther and farther behind.
We talk in assistant principal Jimmy Monaghan's office. When I ask Toni why she had trouble in school, her mom says, "boys" and Toni shrinks in her chair, giving her mom a please-don't-embarrass-me look.
"I just didn't want to do my work," she says. "I was just being lazy."
What happened, I ask. She gives her mom a sideways glance. "Boys happened."
"Mmm-hmm," her mom nods.
"I went to school," Toni says, "but I didn't actually go to class. I could do that work, but I just didn't want to. I knew I was smart, but . . . I don't know. I don't know why I was acting up."
What slowly emerges is a young woman who did not do well in school in part because she did not believe she deserved success.
"I guess I just wanted to be another number," she says. At which point, Monaghan jumps in:
"They've been told their whole lives that they're 'at-risk' and, with that, we crush them. It's a horrible label we throw around. It tells them, 'You're going to be a gangster, a druggie. You're going to end up in jail.' What they are, are youth of promise. That's what we tell them here and we don't waver.
"Toni Harper, why do we say that?"
"So we can help your kids grow up," she says. "So we can teach them the right things."
As graduation neared, Toni quit doing her schoolwork. She lied about it. She feigned illness. Even she knew what she was doing. She had found a safe, stable place and didn't want to leave.
But "Toni Harper is going to graduate," became a mantra at the school. By the last nine weeks, she had pulled her grades back up and completed Denver Justice's other requirements of graduating seniors: acceptance into three colleges, a minimum score of 18 on the ACT, and completion of two college classes. For as long as she can remember, she has wanted to be a doctor.
Toni wrote a speech for her graduation ceremony but decided to speak from her heart. She did not know how full her heart was. Tears poured out instead of words and so she sat back down. But this is what she wanted to say:
Thank you, Mr. Gary Losh. Thank you, Jimmy Monaghan. No matter what I did, you never let me give up. Thank you, Grandpa, because you were the one who signed all those progress reports that had F's on them, and I promised you before you died that I would graduate. Thank you, Mom, because you put up with me, and I know I was bad. Thank you, Dad, Jennifer and Serina.
I have the courage now to believe in myself. I know that some things are not easy, but there's nothing I can't do if I put my mind to it. Thank you. You gave me something I didn't have: hope.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
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