Saint Francis School celebrates bittersweet final commencement

The graduation of 69 Saint Francis School seniors Saturday night, attended by an estimated 1,000 family, friends and supporters, was at once the largest such ceremony in institutional memory and the most intimate, a rite of passage marking the end of both the students’ secondary education and the tiny Catholic school’s own 95-year existence.

For the school’s tight-knit community, the ceremony at the Blaisdell Concert Hall was a grace note to a discordant elegy of events that began in January when administrators announced the planned closing of the middle and high schools due to ongoing financial difficulties and took a darker turn when, a month later, it was decided the entire school would be shuttered.

“There was a lot of shock and sadness but tonight will be about celebrating our seniors and keeping the focus on the positives of what this school and the sisters have accomplished going all the way back to the work of Saint Marianne Cope,” said Casey Asato, who took over as head of school following last summer’s ouster of Sister Joan of Arc Souza, who had presided over the school for 27 years. “This will be an opportunity for the whole community to get some closure.”

Some 1,000 tickets for the school’s 87th commencement exercises were distributed in anticipation of heightened interest by alumni and others close to the school. Yet organizers also stressed the importance of keeping things intimate in spirit. There were no guest speakers and no television news cameras were allowed inside.

“We want to close with dignity and grace,” Asato said.

The school was founded in 1924 by the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Neumann Communities. Originally an all-girls institution, the school went coed in 2006 in an effort to boost enrollment.

This year’s valedictorian, Justin Loi, entered Saint Francis in the sixth grade and is just the second male student to earn top academic honors. His brother Brandon was the salutatorian of last year’s graduating class.

This year’s salutatorian was Kelsey Padilla.

Riding to the concert hall, Loi said he had mixed emotions about the evening.

“Obviously I feel kind of sad that everything is coming to an end, but I also want to be positive and hopeful about the future,” said Loi, who will be attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the fall.

The evening began with the procession of soon-to-be graduates, dressed in powder-blue commencement gowns and white lei, to the stage where they fit onto four rows of seating. It proceeded with an address by Asato that acknowledged the events of the previous five months even as it stressed a forward vision.

In remarks that referenced everything from Japanese aesthetics to Quaker cosmology and everyone from Socrates and Saint Francis of Assisi to the Avengers’ Iron Man and the pop band One Direction, Asato praised the class’s “resilience in a time of significant change” and exhorted its members to find success by staying true to themselves.

Brannon and Paula Quartero were in the audience to see their son Winston, a Saint since kindergarten, receive his diploma.

“I feel sad for the other kids, the ones in the lower grades, who will have to go somewhere else next year,” Brannon Quartero said. “There was a lot of school spirit here, a lot of togetherness.”

Paula Quartero, whose work as a preschool and kindergarten aide ends when the school officially closes May 31, said she will miss the school’s unique sense of community.

Jesse Glover, who was on hand to see his niece Kai- mana Pilares, found the ceremony bittersweet as well.

“It’s sad because these kids are not going to be able to come back and visit campus or cheer on the sports teams once they leave,” he said. “It’s sad but at the same time, if I were in this class, I would be proud to be the last ones to graduate from this school and to represent all those who came before.”