Diploma will be hard-earned

Walking across a stage and receiving a diploma is a major accomplishment, but sometimes a student can step onto the wrong path on the way to that stage.

Cassy Hernandez, 18, was one of those students.

When she was attending Cheney High School, things weren’t going well for her at home. She started to skip classes.

The more she skipped, the further behind she fell.

Finally, two weeks into her sophomore year, she dropped out of school.

In her family, this wasn’t a first. Her mother had dropped out in the ninth grade; her father, in the 10th; and her grandfather, in the eighth.

Hernandez moved from house to house, staying with friends when she could. But that grew old after a while.

After watching television all day, she would meet up with her friends from school, but she found she had less and less in common with them. They would talk about things going on at school, and she knew she had nothing to do with that anymore.

Soon, she lost her friends. And she realized she wasn’t going anywhere with her life and wanted to make a change.

Hernandez had heard about Three Springs High School while at Cheney High and enrolled.

Students who attend Three Springs, operated by the Cheney School District, go only one day a week. They come up with a personal learning plan with their teachers and parents and are required to complete three courses during a six- to seven-week term.

It was what Hernandez was looking for.

“The teachers are so helpful and open,” she said. “They were my main inspiration.”

But it still wasn’t easy.

At one point, Hernandez discovered she had enough credits to be a sophomore, but she was old enough to be a senior. To catch up, she took an accelerated class through Educational Service District 101.

It got even tougher when she discovered she was pregnant.

Hernandez started missing classes again, and one of her teachers, Lisa Staub, kept calling her to try to persuade her to keep going to school.

Not an easy task, because Hernandez lives on Spokane’s North Side and her school is in Cheney. She must take two buses to get to school and two more to get home.

But now, Hernandez tries to go to school more than once a week. She will graduate on time and will be the first person in her family to earn a diploma.

“I got my friends back; I got my life back,” she says.

That life soon will include being a mother.

On July 5, Hernandez is expecting a boy. She plans to name him James Elias – with her boyfriend and roommate, Tyler Windham, 19.

“He’s just so excited, focused on getting me to graduate,” she says of Windham.

Now that she is getting her diploma, Hernandez has her future planned.

She will spend the next year with her new son. After that, she wants to attend Spokane Falls Community College to get an associate’s degree, then Eastern Washington University to study recreational therapy.

Hernandez says she looks forward to supporting her family and gaining independence.

“Having no education makes it really hard to get a good job,” she said.

It’s a lesson she looks forward to passing down to her son.

Most of all, Hernandez carries a sense of accomplishment. She says she heard a statistic that only one in four pregnant teenagers graduates from high school.

“I am very proud,” she says. “I worked so hard to get where I am now.”