RICHMOND

Students who graduated from Richmond High School during a ceremony at the school’s gym on Saturday noted they have experienced a lot of changes in just four years.

“With numerous staff positions vacated, the struggle has been real,” said graduate and honor essayist Michaela Carney in her remarks to fellow graduates, family and friends. “In the last four years alone, we have had two different principals, four science teachers, five social studies teachers, four English teachers and three math teachers.”

Despite the changes, however, Carney said, “I’m not going to play the ‘I wish I had gone somewhere else’ game,” adding that her school experience has made her the person she is today.

As far as the future is concerned, Carney said that “so much change has already happened, what’s a little more going to do to us?”

Valedictorian Cameron Emmons noted the challenges that came with a new grading system implemented at the start of his freshman year.

“Then, at the start of our sophomore year, we were thrown yet another curveball with a massive change in administration,” said Emmons. “The principal and vice principal, who many of us had known for years, both stepped down from their positions and were replaced by Mr. (Steven) Lavoie and Mr. (Ryan) Keith.”

Emmons said there was a “great deal of fear and panic” among students with the change, especially regarding disciplinary procedures. However, the changes the administrators brought with them were “favorable and helped to make the school a much more positive environment for everyone.”

Emmons also described coming into the school on the first day of his senior year “completely in the dark as there was nearly an entirely new teaching staff in place.”

“It was almost as if we had started high school over again,” he said.

Again, he said, the change turned out to be positive, thanks to the “energy and enthusiasm” of the new teachers.

Change keeps coming to Richmond High School and Regional School Unit 2. Superintendent Virgel Hammonds recently announced he is resigning in order to become chief learning officer at the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, an Ohio-based nonprofit that works to foster personalized learning for students to thrive in college, career and civic life.

In an interview before Saturday’s ceremony, Hammonds said his departure after four years in the RSU was “bittersweet” while also reflecting on the graduates.

“It’s fun to have watched the kids grow, and having been with them through all four years, it’s a little bit like I’m right there with them,” Hammonds said. “We’re here celebrating them, and it’s always a pleasure watching that.”

In his remarks at the ceremony, Lavoie, the principal, confessed to being “a sap at graduation.”

“Graduation is the best day of the year for a principal,” Lavoie said, adding that he becomes more “possessive” of the 30 members of the senior class in the time leading up to graduation.

“I refer to them as ‘my seniors,’” he said.

“All these students up here on stage are like shoestrings,” said graduate and honor essayist Bailey Johansen. “Sometimes we’ve gotten pulled apart. But always, always we find a way to be pulled back together.”