MARION, Ala. – Caleb Brooks came to Breakthrough Charter School with an interest in trucks. Four years later, he has a plan to study the business systems that help move goods across the country.
“I wanted to drive trucks,” Brooks said. “So instead of driving trucks, I want to major in supply chain management.”
Brooks is headed to Florida A&M University, where he plans to study supply chain management with help from academic and community scholarships. His path was one of many celebrated Thursday as Breakthrough held a robing ceremony for its first graduating class.
One by one, Breakthrough’s seniors walked onto the stage in the school auditorium, a gymnasium on the campus of the former Marion Academy, while middle and high school students watched from the bleachers.
Each had chosen the people who helped them most during their school years – parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers and school leaders – to place a graduation robe over their shoulders and a cap on their heads.
Breakthrough opened in August 2021 with kindergarten through eighth grade and added one grade each year. The school started with eight eighth-graders. Four years later, its first graduating class includes 18 students.
“Today is more than a ceremony,” founder and Superintendent Darren Ramalho told students and families. “Today is history.”
Ramalho said the robing ceremony was meant to honor not only the students, but also the people who helped them reach graduation.
“The robing ceremony reminds us that no one reaches a milestone alone,” he said. “Behind every graduate is someone who prayed for them, pushed them, believed in them, sacrificed for them, encouraged them and refused to let them quit.”
The school’s first seniors, he said, are “the first to walk this path, the first to set the standard and the first to prove what was possible.”
For Brooks, Breakthrough changed the way he thought about school and his future.
He previously attended Francis Marion School, one of Perry County’s two traditional public K-12 schools. Moving to a new school as a ninth grader was a risk, Brooks said, but one he now sees as worthwhile.
At Breakthrough, students said they found not just academic support, but access – to teachers, counselors and adults who kept asking what they wanted to do next and helping them see how to get there.
“It kind of feels nice to have people that are not related to you show that they care,” Brooks said.
His mother, Earnestine Wagner-Holley, said the move helped bring out her son’s academic potential.
“Breakthrough helped bring out the academics in Caleb,” she said. In his previous school, he told her he wasn’t interested in college, but that changed when he got to Breakthrough.
Brooks graduated with a 3.95 GPA, received academic honors during Thursday’s ceremony and earned a $7,000-a-year academic scholarship from FAMU.
Wagner-Holley said the school’s small size and close communication with parents made a difference. If staff members see a concern, they alert parents quickly, she said.
“They try to nip it in the bud and get it while small.”
She also said the school gave families in Perry County something rural communities often lack: a public school choice.
“By this being a small town, it’s a blessing to have a choice,” Wagner-Holley said. “People need to understand what works for me might not work for you, but what works for you doesn’t work for me. So it’s good to have a choice.”
Breakthrough is one of Alabama’s few rural charter schools. Ramalho said rural families often have fewer education options than families in cities or suburbs.
“You don’t have school choice opportunities as much in rural education,” he said. “To create this space has been good.”
The school’s facilities are modest: portable classroom buildings, gravel parking and a lunchroom across the street from the auditorium where the ceremony was held.
Its’ seniors’ plans are not.
During Thursday’s ceremony, students announced plans to attend colleges including Florida A&M University, the University of South Alabama, the University of West Alabama, Troy University, UAB, Wallace Community College and Jefferson State Community College. Others plan to pursue trades, military service or the workforce.
Kalashia Moore and Jaden Melton are both headed to the University of South Alabama. Moore plans to study speech and hearing sciences and hopes to become an audiologist. Melton plans to major in business, with an interest in marketing and real estate.
Moore said the school’s small size helped students build close relationships with teachers.
“We’re all very close with all our teachers,” Moore said. Teachers “take time out of their day” to tutor students when they need help, she added.
Melton said students know they can ask for help from counselors, teachers or even the head of school.
“You can talk to the counselors,” Melton said. When students are having trouble, adults at Breakthrough give them “an extra, extra push,” she added.
Students said Breakthrough also exposed them to options they might not have considered on their own, including college visits, community college programs and trades.
Melton said those experiences helped students figure out what they wanted to do after graduation.
For Brooks, that helped turn an interest in trucking into a plan to study supply chain management at FAMU.
David Marshall, a Breakthrough board member, was serving on the Alabama Public Charter School Commission when the school was approved in 2020. He said approving a new charter school meant deciding whether to “place a bet” on the people proposing it.
“I looked at the plan that Darren and his group put forward,” Marshall said. “And I said, I think that I would place a bet on these individuals to open up a school.”
Seeing the first graduating class, he said, showed that early confidence is beginning to pay off.
“This is a moment I’m proud to be affiliated with Breakthrough Charter School,” Marshall said.
Ramalho said many of the first seniors and their families took a risk by leaving familiar schools for something new.
“They took that risk, and they’re here,” he said. “It’s exciting.”
Commencement ceremonies will be held Thursday.
After the robes were placed, cords awarded and pictures taken, the seniors walked through the halls where younger students waited to see them.
For Breakthrough’s first graduating class, the walk was one of their last as students. For the younger children lining the halls, it was a look at what comes next.
