Barstow Adult School students graduate

BARSTOW • Corina Muñoz doesn’t back down on her word.

For Muñoz, Barstow Adult School’s graduation ceremony was about fulfilling a promise the 24-year-old had made to her grandmother nine years ago.

Muñoz was one of 13 students in Barstow Unified School District’s adult education program that attended night school over the past several months and received their high school diplomas on Saturday.

According to Jim Ostrander, program coordinator, students end up in adult education for various reasons.

“Each of them has had an individual trip through life that has not been as smooth sailing as they’d have liked,” Ostrander said to the families packed into Thomson Elementary School’s auditorium on Saturday. “...They’ve had to work extra hard...to go back and get their high school diplomas,” he said.

For students like Andrew Maes, it was about making good on a promise. The 38-year-old said he coasted through four years of high school but didn’t graduate. He did, however, make a commitment to his father, who has since died, that he would get his diploma.

“He’s passed on now, but I finally got it,” said Maes, who’s eyes welled up slightly.

His wife, Sarah, said she was proud of her husband.

“For 13 years, he’s been saying, ‘I’m going back to school,’ and he’s finally done it,” she said.

It wasn’t easy though.

For Muñoz, picking up high school in her early twenties was like being the new kid all over again.

“It was awkward to go back,” she said.

Muñoz came to Barstow Adult School after bouncing around several schools. After getting suspended from Barstow High School,

Muñoz’s aunt pulled her out and opted for home-schooling. But Muñoz struggled on her own.

“It was too much trying to depend on yourself and have nobody helping you,”  Muñoz said. So she enrolled in the alternative education program at Central High School. Then at age 17, she became pregnant with her now 5-year-old daughter, and enrolled in the teen mother program. But then she dropped out for a few years.

The promise she made, however, drew her back. After a year of taking  algebra, English and science classes three nights a week, Muñoz was ready to graduate. Tears filled her eyes as she stood up and walked across the front of the auditorium as her husband, two children and other relatives cheered.

“I can show my kids it’s actually worth going for,” Muñoz said.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4122 or elee@desertdispatch.com