Dougherty High's First Graduating Class Celebrates Years of 'Firsts'

Connie Zhang has felt like a high school senior for three years, even though this morning is her official graduation.

The 18-year-old is among the 243 pupils in Dougherty Valley High School's first-ever graduating class, and as such, she's always been one of the oldest students on campus.

"As the first class, we got to set a lot of traditions," said Zhang, who will move on to Emory University in the fall as a science major. "We got to lay the foundation for other students."

A lot of that foundation-laying meant starting clubs to create some kind of academic culture on campus, said Zhang, who as an incoming sophomore transplanted from Monte Vista High School in 2008 became one of the founding members of the Dougherty chapter of the National Honors Society.

Dougherty Principal Denise Hibbard said she couldn't be prouder of her school's first-ever graduates.

"As a new school, there are so many firsts," said Hibbard, who took her job in 2007, a year before the school opened.

One of the most notable firsts for Hibbard was Dougherty's inaugural Academic Performance Index score, the one tallied by the state to gauge student progress in subjects like Math and English. It was 891. It's moved to 905 since then, pushing the school into the top 20 highest scoring in California.

Part of the reason that score is so high is because of students like Zhang, who set the tone for academic excellence by creating clubs to encourage studiousness. And clubs to build up school spirit, like "6 The Man Club," the one founded by senior Andrew Dala, 17, to get students fired up at sporting events by parading the blue-and-silver school colors and waving around posters of the Wildcats mascot.

"We got people excited about being part of the school," said Dala, who two years ago was pulled from California High School to attend Dougherty as a sophomore. "We were always the oldest, so we felt responsible for doing that."

For students like Dala and Zhang, it was a very different high school experience compared to that of their peers.

Dougherty was a unique school in many ways. Built with $128 million funded by developers of the surrounding subdivisions, the school started out as a state-of-the-art facility in terms of technology and teacher training. Designed to accommodate 2,200 students, it started out with less than a few-hundred. For a full year, the class of 2010 was by itself on the sprawling 54-acre campus. Then, halfway through their high school career, it was mixed in with hundreds more students when incoming freshmen entered the school in 2009.

"We were used to this small school, it felt like a private school, we all knew each other," Dala said. "And then, we doubled in size. It was chaos."

But the new students, in many ways, helped classmates like Dala hone in their leadership skills. He helped start a tradition of meeting up with incoming freshmen on their first day of school at sunrise, to celebrate the dawn of a new academic chapter in life. And Thursday night, he established another new tradition, to gather with his graduating classmates at sunset to commemorate the twilight of their high school experience.

Hibbard said she's learned a lot from her students, and she hopes the work they did in forming a culture at Dougherty stays alive in the long run.

"It's been an amazing four years," Hibbard said Thursday, the day before today's graduation ceremony. "I hope that we continue that academic traditions that we've set in the next five to 10 years."

Check back on San Ramon Patch Saturday for a special graduation slideshow to celebrate the 2010 graduating classes of Dougherty Valley High School, California High School, Venture, and Del Amigo. Families and friends are encouraged to upload their own photos and videos, too.