MARYSVILLE — “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Marysville school board president Tom Albright told the 39 students who graduated from Mountain View High School and the SOAR Program June 9. “Of all the Marysville schools’ graduations, this is our favorite, because of how much you all have worked to get here.”

One measure of the additional challenges those students have faced is that the students receiving their diplomas included members of the classes of 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Principal Dawn Bechtholdt noted that a former student, who took part in the Tulalip SHoPP this year, had returned to walk with his old classmates.

Three other students participated online through the Marysville Move-Up Virtual Education Program, and traveled to that night’s commencement from Tacoma, Burlington and Sedro-Woolley.

For the students who shared the same small campus in Marysville, Bechtholdt reported that the school became “a home away from home.”

Even as Bechtholdt praised school staff and the students’ families for helping them, she also credited the students with refusing to give up.

“We have done all we can do with you graduates,” Bechtholdt said. “Now, it’s up to you to remember what you have learned, and trust yourselves to reach toward the dreams and goals you have set for yourself.”

Bechtholdt encouraged the graduates to keep reaching toward those goals, to reset them as needed, to use all their resources and ask for help when needed.

Kira Bryant and Nicholas Anderson spoke for their fellow Mountain View graduates, while Najia Griffin served as the representative of SOAR.

Bryant admitted that she and her peers spent many of their school days counting down how many class periods they had left in the day, and how many semesters they had left before graduation.

“I will measure my time here in a much different way,” Bryant said. “I will measure it in all the friendships I’ve enjoyed these past four years. Some were pretty casual, others were much closer, some were lost and some were gained, but I’ll remember each one fondly, as I’m sure you will.”

Anderson, a self-described “super senior” who finished classes in January, recalled how he began high school with a bad attitude toward learning, which was magnified by his peers and the school he was originally attending.

After failing his first two years of high school, Anderson was persuaded to switch to Mountain View.

“It was one of the best decisions of my life,” Anderson said. “This school has built me up from someone who was pretty much at rock bottom looking, at the possibility of not graduating, and pushed me to do more things with my life than I thought possible.

“We are the students that other schools either didn’t care about, or just blatantly gave up on, but the staff at Mountain View never did,” he added. “Each of the graduates here tonight brought something with them that brightened up the school, to make it the giant dysfunctional family that it is,” he laughed.

Griffin had no idea how much work she’d signed on for, when she switched to SOAR, but like Anderson, she deemed the extra effort more than worthwhile.

“Instead of going to football games and hanging out with friends every weekend, my time was spent on classwork,” Griffin said. “We learned how to prioritize our time wisely. We all motivate each other every day to keep going and keep pushing on, no matter how tough things may get.”

Bechtholdt noted the number of graduates who are already shouldering adult responsibilities, including full-time jobs and families of their own, as well as the total amount of scholarships they’ve received, more than $28,000.

“This year’s graduates will go wherever they choose to go and will do whatever they want to do — just ask them,” Bechtholdt laughed. “They are resilient and spirited and full of passion for who and what they love.”