The vice-principal for grade 12 students at the Steinbach Regional Secondary School says this year’s graduating class has an excellent sense of community.

374 grade 12 students are graduating from the SRSS Tuesday afternoon. James Gibson is the Vice-Principal for the grade 12 class at the SRSS. He says there are a lot of great leaders in this year's grad class.

Grade 12 Vice-Principal James Gibson“They are a fun group. They are great kids. They have been active whether it be through sports, or social justice, theatre, improv, there have been a lot of different involvements so the class has diversified in that way but they have still maintained a good level of cohesiveness with each other.”

Nicolas Dizon is was appointed by his class to represent them as valedictorian this year. He says it was a big honour to be chosen by his peers.

“We are different in a way. Academically speaking, we are there, but the friendships we made, the fun we have together is what separates us from the other classes because I feel like everyone has a close bond together. Even though we are separated around this building, I feel like we have that bond.”

Gibson says this is one of the smaller classes to come out of the SRSS in a while and that has helped create a sense of community. He notes around half of the grads this year have been at the SRSS since grade 9.

“It is a unique graduating class because it was actually a split grade nine group. Urban Steinbach kids came here in grade nine, students came here in grade nine and then the rural students came here in grade 10 so we had this kind of split class that we had to get some gelling going on with them and I think we have managed that with this group.”

Convocation begins at 3:00 P.M. at the Winnipeg Convention Centre this Tuesday.