Eagle Rock Class of 2012 Graduates (Photos)

Eagle Rock High School's Class of 2012 graduated Wednesday in a grand ceremony at an open-air theater that LAUSD Superintendent John Deasey described as “arguably the most impressive graduation” he had “seen so far in L.A.”

Some 3,000 people attended the graduation—538 of them graduating seniors—filling up the stands of Oxy’s Remsen Bird Hillside Theater to capacity. It was the largest-ever graduating class at Eagle Rock High and the first graduating class in LAUSD’s history from a school affiliated to the International Baccalaureate program, which seeks to develop the intellectual, social and personal skills of students in a rapidly globalizing world.

The Class of 2012 has an impressive 98 percent graduation rate, according to Principal Salvador Velasco, who also pointed out that the school’s overall graduation rate has improved an average of 5 percent annually for the past six years. Of the 538 graduates, 519 were from the school’s ninth-grade cohort.

Thanks to the school’s steady emphasis over the years on cultivating a college-bound culture, 92 percent of the students in the Class of 2012 are set to attend post-secondary educational institutions: 43.5 percent are headed to four-year colleges or universities, and 48 percent to two-year community colleges.

Two students have been admitted to Harvard, including Valedictorian Jasmine Fernandez and Couger Jimenez-Jaramillo, whose brother Alejandro was the Valedictorian in the Class of 2011 and who is a member of the Harvard Class of 2016.

Salutatorian Elisha Marquez, the first-ever student at Eagle Rock High to win a scholarship through the prestigious Gates Millennium Scholars program, is headed to Stanford, while several students have been admitted to other leading four-year universities such as Brown and Syracuse.

Stay tuned for our upcoming video on the graduation.

Related: Should Eagle Rock High Honor Two Valedictorians?