Speakers celebrate students at Burbank High School graduation ceremony

High school graduation brings new beginnings — and new responsibilities.

“Life is probably going to get a lot harder,” Jonathan Ragheb, Burbank High School’s valedictorian, told 600 seniors celebrating their graduation accomplishment Friday evening.

Global warming, terrorism and rising gas prices are “scary” facts of life, “but the fact that it’s our job to fix these things in kind of exciting,” said Ragheb, who is expected to attend Harvard to study computational neuroscience on a pre-med track.

Echoing the tropes of hope and humor that suffused the ceremony, Ragheb quoted North Korea’s Kim Jung-un in the leader’s native tongue, then translating it as “When young people are powerful, there’s nothing for us to be afraid of.”

Ragheb is following in the footsteps of his brother, Daniel, who is attending Harvard and also quoted a famous Kim in his Burbank High valedictorian speech two years ago — Kim Kardashian.

Senior speaker Basil Phillip Aranda similarly stressed students’ roles in shaping the world. Holding a ruler, Aranda told the packed Burbank High field that “the king of the school isn’t the ruler, it’s the students.”

Offering a litany of statistics, principal Michael Bertram commended the graduating class: 100 students earned a 4.0 grade-point average or better; 11 scored 1,500 or higher on the SAT; 169 performed over 100 hours of community service; 345 committed to attending a four-year college or university, and eight joined the armed forces. One student scored a perfect score on the AP computer science exam.

“Ninety-four percent of our population here in front of me has committed to some kind of plan after high school,” Bertram said.

Despite their eclectic paths, including one professional soccer player and several models and actors, “they at least have a plan,” Bertram said.

The ceremony concluded with a burst of silver streamers and applause. Parents and newly minted high school graduates milled excitedly on the field, some overwhelmed with emotion and others simply relieved to have made it out with diploma in hand.

Graduate Omar Flores said he was going to miss the social aspect of high school.

“Everyone here is kind of in the same boat, trying to figure out themselves,” he said. “And I think that’s something that’s not too easy to come by later in life.”

Flores plans to head to UC San Diego in the fall but has not settled on a major.

Another graduate, Chris Paterra, said high school was not easy for a person struggling with gender-identity issues, but that Burbank High’s former school psychologist John Constanzo was a big help who “made a lot of the years bearable.”

Paterra plans to attend a local community college in the fall and then eventually move to Iceland.

“I know it’s a big step,” Paterra said.

Lila Seidman is a contributing writer for Times Community News.