WERACE graduates
This year’s commencement exercises for Western Connecticut Regional Adult & Continuing Education (WERACE) bore many milestones. Not only was it the largest graduating class in a decade with more than 60 graduates, but it also was the culmination of hard work and achievement for many who had thought the dream of earning a high school degree was impossible. The WERACE Class of 2019 also had some special connections: Jose Ortiz-Vasquez graduated with his son Joseph Ortiz. Graduate Adane DeJesus received her diploma along with her son Melvyn Wilder III.
“The 2019 ceremony was dynamic and full of energy and enthusiasm,” said Program Facilitator and Community Outreach Coordinator Jody Huzina. “We were honored to be joined by Mayor Mark Boughton, five members of the Danbury Public Schools Board of Education, the Connecticut State Department of Education, area business leaders, and state senators. Student speakers Jose Ortiz-Vasquez, Luis Simbana and Lorraine Stewart each shared a heartfelt speech about their journey and what the WERACE program meant to them. They each received a $250 scholarship toward their post-secondary journey.”
The ceremony was held at Western Connecticut State University’s Visual & Performing Arts Center on June 17. WERACE is a regional program offering adult education services to seven Fairfield County towns to eligible students age 17 and over. The Danbury program is overseen by Huzina and Regional Director Terence Cunningham.
“Today I wanted to give you advice that could be useful and hopefully inspiring,” Cunningham said to the graduates. “I like to leave any group I speak to with an inspirational quote. Today I will leave you with this quote from an unknown author: ‘If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.’”
Based on their shared experiences of accomplishing goals despite disappointment and heartache, the graduates indeed presented as leaders.
Graduate Jose Ortiz Vasquez said that he was scheduled to complete high school in 1997, but it became necessary for him to work and help his mother, a single parent of four children, make ends meet, and finishing school went on the back burner. He tried several times to complete a graduate-equivalency diploma before finding WERACE.
“I dropped out (of WERACE) twice, in 2008 and 2011, each of those times due to the birth of my handsome boys,” Vasquez said. “In 2017 when my oldest son started losing focus in school, I was thinking ‘how can I motivate him?’ So I decided I needed to be the example and to enroll in